Hero's Funeral
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM preslash. Auror Harry Potter is used to visions of violent death, but now he's having ones that include his own while also coping with a dark case. Luckily his partner Draco Malfoy is there to help. Sequel to Invisible Sparks. COMPLETE.
1. His Own Funeral

**Title: **Hero's Funeral

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.

**Warnings:** OC character death, angst, gore, violence, ignores the epilogue.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco preslash, mentions of Ron/Hermione.

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **Auror Harry Potter has always had the "gift" of seeing murders in visions. Now he's seeing visions of his own death, and all while trying to work his first case for Socrates Corps. It's a good thing that his partner, Draco Malfoy, is there to help.

**Author's Notes:** This is the first longer fic in the "Cloak and Dagger" series, where Harry and Draco are Auror partners investigating a variety of dark cases. The series will eventually move to a slash relationship, but not right away. This particular fic should have between six and eight parts, and be updated every Wednesday evening.

**Hero's Funeral**

_Chapter One-His Own Funeral_

"Potter."

Harry kept his head down, his eyes on the desk in front of him as he arranged the old files that he'd brought with him from Aristotle Corps. They were the most useful for his new job, containing records of wizards that he now understood as some of the twisted. He would only hunt future twisted as his official Socrates work, although he could help out on other cases when they didn't have one to hunt.

From what Auror Latham had said while briefing them, Harry was sure that they would have more than enough twisted to go around.

"Potter," said a heavier voice behind him, and Harry turned around to face Draco Malfoy.

They'd seen each other several times before this as the other members of Socrates Corps briefed them, gave them advice, and explained the basic rules and regulations governing this most secretive of the Auror groups to them, but they hadn't had time for long conversations. And this was their first day together as official partners. Harry reckoned he should make an effort, or Malfoy would complain about him to their superiors, and he'd be right to do so, by most measurements. Harry gave a shallow fraction of a nod. "Hullo, Malfoy."

Malfoy sat down in his own chair and ignored Harry for the next few minutes, as though he had got what he wanted. Harry shrugged and went back to arranging his files. They were in an order that Hermione had argued didn't make sense, but they did to Harry; they were arranged from most to least traumatic. If half the information he had received about the twisted was true, then the more innocent cases he'd been called out to investigate wouldn't help him, or at least not often.

Harry let his hand linger on the top file for a second. It recorded the Gina Kendricks case, called after the first victim. Most of the time, the cases were named after the criminals, but in this case, they'd never got the official name of the creature that did the killing before Harry brought it down.

_They can call it Hendricks all they like. _For Harry, it would always be Vane.

"_Potter_." Malfoy's voice was sharp.

Harry sighed and turned around. They'd got along well enough during their first few encounters, if stiffly. He hoped Malfoy wasn't trying to revive their rivalry. It would be boring. Harry had changed enough from that person to no longer find even his memories all that interesting. "Yes?"

Malfoy held out a file to him. He was slender enough that if he stood broadside to a shadow, Harry thought, he would disappear. He had cut his blond hair short, but the cut was nowhere near unflattering. "We have a case."

Harry narrowed his eyes and took the file from him. Auror Latham had cautioned them that it normally took weeks of work to identify a twisted; in fact, most of the time Socrates Corps was called in on what had looked like a normal case at first, and which only displayed the characteristics of twisted work after intensive investigation. It seemed a nasty coincidence that they received their first case their first official day at work.

"Read it, Potter, don't caress it."

Harry didn't look up at Malfoy, because he wouldn't give him the satisfaction. He began reading the case file instead.

The suspect was a wizard named Alasdair Larkin, who had been accused of breaking into a witch's house and stealing some valuable family jewelry. The day before she was supposed to testify against him, the witch had dropped dead in the middle of a party, with no one near her and her first glass still in her hand, untouched. Less than an hour later, Larkin was gone from his holding cell, snatched away by a band of what the witnesses called "soft ghosts" and with a symbol left behind on the wall: a black, broken sketch like a snapped unicorn's horn.

_Companions, and symbol, _Harry noticed. The briefing had included the information that a twisted wizard, one driven mad by excessive use of Dark Arts, would always have companions around and serving him or her, and would create a personal symbol usually left behind at crime scenes and imprinted on the bodies of companions.

A lot of things about Voldemort had made more sense, when Harry heard that.

Larkin had likewise demonstrated two of the other five signs that the wizard they were dealing with was a twisted: he used only Dark Arts in battle, no matter what spell were flung at him, and when one of the Aurors who had captured him after the theft opened a small cut on the back of his hand, he proved incapable of healing it, although that charm was simple. Twisted were proficient in Dark Arts and preferred them above all else, and they could not use healing magic.

So far, though, there was considerable doubt about the fifth sign, the most dangerous one-Larkin's flaw. Every twisted had an ability of wandless magic, called the flaw, that they mostly used to kill or torture their victims.

Harry hoped fervently that this one's flaw wasn't something like focusing on a particular victim and willing them to die, which was the main guess in this file. Larkin would be next to impossible to capture, if that was the case.

"Are you done with the file, or do you need to clutch at it a little longer?"

Harry started and looked up, scowling. Malfoy stood with his hand extended for the file, snapping his fingers as if he assumed that Harry existed to give it to him and for no other purpose.

_You're here to be partners, _Harry reminded himself, and passed the file back over. _Not schoolboys._

"There's no doubt about him being a twisted," he said, glad that his voice was cool and not full of the enmity that Malfoy seemed to be trying to stir up behind them. "Are we going to interview the witnesses first, or go after Larkin's family members?"

Malfoy opened his mouth to answer. His words amounted to nothing more than a roaring in Harry's ears, like the call of a distant ocean. The world around him stretched and warped, flowing away, and the colors in front of Harry smeared and changed.

_Not again. _Harry went to one knee, grimacing, and closed his eyes. Since the war, he'd had visions of the most violent murders in Britain, sometimes in time to do something about them, sometimes with details that would let him catch the murderers. It was an invaluable gift for an Auror, but it did rather tend to take over his life when it happened.

He waited for the victim to swim out of the colors around him. The vision always centered on the victim first, sometimes to the extent that Harry watched them die through their eyes.

But he saw no victim this time. Instead, there was only a giant metallic shape flying directly towards him, surrounded by what looked like silvery mist, and manic laughter somewhere in the background. The shape hit him, and Harry jolted and cried out as he felt his bones breaking, his heart smashing and his lungs piercing under his ribs as they bowed inwards. He writhed in pain, and it flooded him, and it was the world, and it was more intense than anything he had ever experienced before.

For long moments, he thought his heart might stop simply because of what he was feeling.

Then it was gone, and he was kneeling on the floor of the Socrates office, with Malfoy staring down at him. He looked impatient, which gratified Harry. He couldn't _stand _fussing over him when he had these visions. They were inconvenient and violent, but they were a necessary part of his life, and nothing he had tried got rid of them. He might as well use them.

"What was _that_, Potter?" Malfoy asked, voice cold as Nagini's heart.

"I get visions of deaths," Harry said, and reached out a shaking hand until he was sure that he could get hold of his desk and stand up. "Most of the time, they can give me some details of the victim or the murderer. Sometimes they haven't happened yet, and we can catch someone."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. "I understand your high arrest record now."

Harry snorted, but made no answer. He had other gifts, but Malfoy would discover those as they worked together as partners; he had no need to reveal them all at the moment. "This was different, though," he said. "More violent."

Malfoy nodded. "Does it link to Larkin?"

"I don't know," Harry said, thinking again about the intense pain, the way that he had no idea who the victim was, and shuddering as the sensations roared through him. He really had thought he was dying, not just observing a death.

_Dying._

"I think," he said, and was proud of himself for keeping his voice steady as he spoke, "that the death I saw in the vision was mine."

* * *

Draco did not need this.

He was already impatient enough with his assignment to Socrates. He knew his superiors wanted to see him fail, and that he would impress them and drive them into grudging acknowledgment of his greatness. But as yet, he had seen no enemy moving openly. He didn't know who he should target.

And then Potter, the one person whose hostility he thought he already understood, displayed this bloody character flaw.

Draco paused. Perhaps the recent facts they'd learned about the twisted were still too much in his mind, but he did wonder if Potter's magic, these visions that apparently most of the Auror Department knew about, were a flaw.

But he had no answers, and he had more important things to attend to, so he said impatiently, "Well, you're not dead yet, so this must be one of the visions that happens before the death. What did you see?"

Potter shook his head. "Mist. A weight of some sort flying at me, falling on me. It crushed me, and that's how I died. Someone laughing."

Draco waited, then sighed. "And no more than that? That's not a lot to bloody go on."

Potter swung around to glare at him. Draco felt slightly comforted by that. Matters weren't actually that bad if Potter could glare at him so. "So sorry, Malfoy," he said, voice aimed at what would have been an acceptable sneer if he had more practice. "My death doesn't live up to your standards any more than anything else about me."

Draco let his gaze linger on Potter's hair, and said nothing. The silence would do all his work for him. Potter's nostrils flared, and he turned away as if he had nothing more to say on that score.

"I'll watch your back," Draco said. "To reply to your question that started all this-since I doubt you heard me-we should go to Larkin's relatives first. We already have most of the details about Serena Whitley's death that the witnesses could give us, in the report."

"We have to figure out what the flaw is before we can hunt him," Potter argued, with a frown.

_The "trauma" from his vision is wearing off already, I see. Just as well that he won't turn into a sobbing wreck that I have to take care of. _"His relatives are closer to him than a lot of random wizards were to Whitley," Draco said. "They might have some idea of the flaw as well as of hiding places."

Potter snorted something that was evidently meant to be agreement, but sounded like a horse blowing its nose. "Come on, then." He turned and walked out of the office, his back straight. Draco followed, watching him and wondering again why no one had thought to inform Draco himself of those visions. This one had dropped Potter for a good five minutes.

_If that happens in the middle of battle, then I'll probably have to take care of him after all. Or at least his corpse._

Draco sighed. He should have known that when he received what was technically a promotion-the Socrates Corps hunted the most dangerous Dark wizards in Britain-it would turn out to be covered with shit on the bottom.

* * *

"I know that it must have been a shock." Harry kept his voice soothing, lulling, the way he had learned to do with witnesses, victims who'd survived, and other people connected in some way to the killer. Other Aurors could work better with humor, with aggression, with toughness, or even with silence, but this was the way _he _worked. "To think that someone that close to you could do something like that..."

"They don't have enough evidence to convict him!" Rebecca Larkin interrupted, leaning forwards and glaring at Harry around the shoulder of her teary-eyed mother, Joanna. "It was only hearsay that Alasdair even stole her _jewelry, _never mind what else you're saying about him!"

Harry turned a patient smile on her, and said, "You're an intelligent young woman, Ms. Larkin. Do you really think that all the evidence points to someone else? If so, let us know. We'd be just as happy to think that Ms. Whitley's death was an accident and we can arrest someone else for the robbery."

Malfoy, gone silent and tense behind him, relaxed again. Harry could tell that much without looking at him. He sighed soundlessly. _Good. _He'd seen in their first five minutes here that Malfoy didn't have good interview technique.

"Make some tea for them, please, Rebecca," Joanna said in a small, dignified voice.

"They're _Aurors_," Rebecca said, focusing on her mother in a way that made Harry suddenly aware this small, shawl-clad woman might command in this house after all, rather than her daughter. "You know what they're here to do to Alasdair, Mum! You can't tell them anything!"

"I believe," said Joanna, glancing at her daughter from behind square glasses, "that I know as much about who they are as you do."

Rebecca's head drooped. Her mouth worked for a moment, as though she would interrupt out of spite, but at last she got up and went to the kitchen. The flat was small, though, and Harry knew she would hear any sound they made from there. Her glare over her shoulder said she planned to use that to her advantage. But at least it got her behind a wall and out of sight.

"Are you all right, Mrs. Larkin?" Harry asked quietly.

Joanna sighed and mopped her glasses on the edge of her shawl. She had the dark hair that her daughter and son shared, although hers was tinted with grey, but her eyes were a bright blue that reminded Harry of Lionel's.

_The Vane case, _he thought, and used it like a lullaby to put the memories to sleep.

"I am," she whispered. "And I have to say that I can believe it of Alasdair, even though Becky doesn't want to. Oh, I can believe it of him."

"Did you see him using Dark Arts?" Harry asked. It was such a basic question he had skipped asking it at first, because he had assumed both witnesses would be hostile based on Rebecca Larkin's demeanor. But Joanna nodded, her eyes shut now, as if looking into the past.

"Yes. He was fascinated with the great Dark Lords of the past, you know. Grindelwald most of all. He didn't think much of You-Know-Who." A dry puff of a laugh slipped from her throat. "Thought he was too common, too obvious. But I thought it was an interest in history at first, and I never prevented him from studying it.

"Three years ago, I caught him sacrificing a stoat on the night of the full moon."

Malfoy hissed between his teeth. Harry opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, about whether it was blood magic, but Malfoy beat him to it.

"To summon another body for himself?" he asked.

Joanna nodded to him. "Exactly," she said. "He told me that, freely. He seemed to think there was no reason I would disapprove." She sighed. "I realized later that he interpreted my not restricting his reading as a sign that I would be on his side."

Harry kept his mouth shut, because Malfoy had moved smoothly into control of the interrogation, but his thoughts raced furiously. He'd never heard of summoning another body for someone as part of Dark magic. He wondered why Malfoy's mind had leaped there immediately, and when he planned to inform Harry of what he was thinking about.

"I told him he would have to leave the house if he did something like that again, and for a time he kept it quiet. But then I found blood in his bedroom, and books he couldn't explain on his shelves, and turned him out. He hasn't lived with us for the past two years." Joanna hesitated.

"Anything could be important," Harry said, recognizing the hesitation for what it was, an uncertainty about whether she should speak the next words or not. Malfoy, who had been preparing a speech of his own, hissed like a snake thwarted of food for her nestlings, but Harry ignored him. He might tell the git about the comparison later, though. Knowing Malfoy, it would probably flatter rather than insult him.

"He kept saying to me-in the days when he would talk about Grindelwald and his studies under the impression that I was on his side-that the greatest weapon any Dark Lord could have wasn't his soldiers. I think I mentioned that he was rather contemptuous of the Death Eaters." Malfoy stirred again behind Harry, but Harry thought he managed to tamp it down before Joanna noticed. _Good. We're going to meet any number of people on cases like this who will think everything connects back to Voldemort, and it'll be hard to deal with them if he's so sensitive. _"He said that their greatest weapon was _fear. _We became afraid to pronounce You-Know-Who's name, and that was when, according to Alasdair, he'd won. It was the one thing he admired about him."

Harry felt the deep sensation of rightness that usually touched him when he knew that he'd learned an important fact about his target, if not how it fit in yet. He smiled at Joanna. "One more question, and I hope that you don't mind it being a personal one. What did he think about You-Know-Who's defeat?"

"Tea!" Rebecca announced loudly, stepping out of the kitchen and glaring at them as if she dared them to refuse.

"He couldn't believe it had happened, at first." Joanna reached for the first cup of tea without looking, as if she knew exactly where the tray would be, and indeed Rebecca moved over to ensure that her mother could reach. Harry was glad to see that. Sometimes it needed work to remind himself that a loud or unpleasant person they dealt with in the course of their jobs really wasn't a _bad _person. "Then he excused it by saying that You-Know-Who had let the fear falter. You weren't afraid of him, Auror Potter. Or not afraid enough not to fight him," she added, with a shrewd glance that made Harry a bit uncomfortable. "That was his version of all the Dark Lords' successes and defeats, as I think I told you."

Harry nodded. "Thank you, Mrs. Larkin. You've been very helpful."

"Isn't that nice?" Rebecca asked in a bright, brittle voice, and shoved the teatray at them. "Here, take what you like."

"No, thanks," Harry said, with a nod at her, and stood up.

"Because you don't trust me, I suppose." Rebecca puffed up. "Because you think that I'd poison you to help Alasdair or something."

"Yes, that's exactly what we think," Malfoy said, before Harry could intervene with something diplomatic. "Or at least _I _do, and I trust that everyone in this room recognized that I'm the brains of the partnership."

Harry turned and glared at him. Malfoy looked back, unimpressed-until the moment when his eyes widened and he leaped on Harry, bearing him to the floor.

The teatray went by with a rapid _swish _above their heads. Harry's eyes fixed on it for a moment, and he saw that it was silver.

A silver metallic weight, descending on him, surrounded by mist that could also be interpreted as the white sleeves of Rebecca's robes swishing alongside it. Only the laughter-Alasdair's laughter, Harry presumed-was missing.

He rolled to the side, dragging Malfoy with him, and so they weren't there when Rebecca slammed the teatray into the floor, either. Harry dragged again and got Malfoy behind him, drawing his wand.

"Rebecca," Joanna whispered, a world of fear in her tone.

The violent emotions that had made Rebecca attack were already wearing off; she stood there with a white face and her hands clasped to her mouth. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what happened-I was thinking that you'd take Alasdair to prison, and how afraid I was of that, and suddenly I had to attack you-I had to-"

Malfoy spoke a quiet, competent binding curse, and Rebecca dropped to the floor, her hands roped together behind her back, a gag over her mouth. Harry glared at him and said, "We need her able to talk."

"Then take the gag off," Malfoy snapped, standing with his wand leveled at the young witch. "She tried to _murder _us."

"It was a tray," Harry said, but the resemblance to his vision was crimping his voice off. He knelt down next to Rebecca and took the gag off. She stared at him, trembling, her eyes fierce with terror behind the tears.

_Terror._

"Let me guess," he said, gentle because he could be, because he understood. "You felt fear that we would take your brother to prison."

Rebecca, eyes locked with his, nodded. Hers were dark, Harry thought, unlike their mother's, but very close to the photographs of Alasdair Larkin that he had already studied.

"Fear so great you would do _anything _to prevent it."

She nodded again, and shut her eyes, turning her head away.

Harry stood back up, catching Malfoy's eye. He mouthed, _I know what his flaw is. _


	2. Flawed

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two-Flawed_

"That makes no sense at all."

"Why not?"

Draco didn't grit his teeth, because he knew, after years of lectures by his mother, what that did to the shape of someone's jaw. But he did attempt to reason with Potter. The man had a brain, as he had shown in the interrogation of the Larkins; the pity was that he so often packed it away into a crate at the base of his skull. "Because it doesn't fit what we know about Larkin, from the way that Whitley died to what his mother said about him."

"Fine, then." Potter gave Draco a small, mean smile. They had returned to the Socrates office, so that they might have a private space to talk, and Potter sat on the edge of his desk, swinging his legs. Draco was _certain _Potter knew how much that annoyed Draco and had chosen to use it for that reason. "Then explain to me why it doesn't fit. I've already given you my reasons in support of the theory."

Draco took a moment to marshal his thoughts. Unlike certain people who had gone through the war and learned nothing of the theory of generalship, _he _had learned the proper way to lead, although the only place he would ever have the power to exercise it was in his own skull. Then again, that was likely the most important place to exercise it.

"You claim that Larkin's flaw is that he causes fear from a distance," he said. "So he interfered with his sister's emotions, and with Whitley's, and with yours."

Potter nodded, his eyes bright as he watched Draco. Draco turned his shoulder towards him so that he could pace in comfort without having to worry about what effect his words would have on Potter.

"If that's the case, then his performance has been inconsistent in the extreme," Draco pointed out. His voice was just the way he liked to hear it, calm and collected with a scrim of ice on top. His father would have been proud of him-

No. That would not happen. His father would never be proud of him again. Draco flared his nostrils out and let his voice flow on, hoping that Potter wouldn't notice the pause or think about the reasons for said pause.

"We have one death, one attack, and one vision," Draco said. "Why didn't he manage to kill you with this vision, then, if you're going to theorize that it's the same kind he used to attack Whitley? Why didn't he try to kill his sister, after the attack if not before?"

"Because his power is more flexible than that," Potter said. "And he would have a little more reason to spare his sister, who loves and believes in him, than the woman who accused him in the first place or the Auror who's hunting him."

Draco paused. He had to admit that, sometimes, Potter was capable of coming up with a halfway logical thought. "That still doesn't explain the difference between your reaction to the vision and Whitley's death."

"I'm more used to the visions," Potter said. "This was more intense than any I've ever experienced, and I could feel the physical reactions in a way that I usually don't. I think he _counted _on killing me. He didn't count on the fact that I've seen so many of the horrific bloody things that I have more resistance." A small, grim smile played around his lips.

Draco shook his head. "And what would Whitley have been afraid of? How could he have reached out and killed her from his prison cell? There were wards around it that should have prevented any remote exercise of magic."

Potter reached behind him for the Larkin file and flipped it open to the top page. "Wards around the cell," he quoted, "were tuned to Larkin's wand." He raised an eyebrow at Draco. "And as we both know from our Socrates briefings, the definition of the twisted includes an ability of _wandless _magic. Called the flaw."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "They had identified Larkin as a twisted by the time he was in the cell. They would have put up stronger wards."

Potter shook his head. "Final identification came only after the witnesses watched his removal from the cell and found the sign of the broken horn on the wall. Until then, they didn't know he was a twisted. He used Dark Arts, but he was arrested for theft, not murder, the way most of the twisted are." He turned the file around so that Draco could see a photograph he'd already spent too much time studying, the wall of Larkin's cell with the broken horn sketch imprinted on it. "When he vanished, then people started putting the clues together."

"You still haven't explained the inconsistencies," Draco said. "I've read the records as closely as you have."

Potter glanced at the Larkin file, then looked innocently up at the ceiling. Draco ground his teeth this time, forgetting his mother's warning, and then stopped. In some ways, it was ridiculous to try and live by the rules of people who had kicked him out, but in several other ways, it was the only anchor he had.

"Flaws aren't all-powerful," Draco said. "How could he reach out across the distance, and why would he affect his sister so differently than the two of you?"

"The way she described it, she had a _vision _of her brother in prison," Potter said, triumphantly waving the file back and forth. "That's what happens. The vision he sent to his sister inspired her to attack. The ones he sent to me and Whitley were probably the same, but hers stopped her heart-"

"Yes, yes, I understand," Draco said impatiently. "That still doesn't give us any practical limits. There has to be a way in which he's limited, or else he would have reached out and inflicted the same visions on his mother and on me. His mother was closer to us for longer than his sister, and told us things that were more damaging. Surely it would be best and simplest to make her a victim?"

"That's the part I haven't figured out yet," Potter admitted, leaning back and frowning at the ceiling. "After all, if he knows that I've been assigned to his case this quickly, then he ought to know you've been assigned, too. But you haven't felt the slightest fear of him, have you?"

"I feel the natural and proper fear," Draco returned, and yes, the ice in his voice was perfect this time. Anyone who came around the corner would have known what Potter didn't seem to, that Draco was the smarter and tougher one of the pair. Potter had died to save everyone, which was different from holding his own and fighting for them, the way Draco had done with his parents.

_And then they kicked you out. _

Draco shook his head to clear it and focused on Potter again. "Aren't you afraid of him?"

Potter paused, a thoughtful expression on his face. Draco found himself actually interested in hearing the answer, although knowing Potter it would be wound up in incomprehensible Gryffindor philosophy and Draco would have to dig down to actually know and understand the truth.

Then Potter fell off his desk and tried to swallow his tongue for the second time that day, and Draco had other things to worry about than how tangled his philosophy was.

* * *

The vision slammed into him without warning, the way that all of them did, but this one had the pulse-pounding blood-fear in the corners of his brain that Harry remembered from the last Larkin-inflicted hallucination. He gritted his teeth so that he would do less damage to his tongue and began to repeat over and over to himself in a connected chant, _It's not real. It's not real._

The vision opened. Harry found himself lying on some hard, white, gleaming material that stretched out around him. A floor of bone, of tiles? He tried to study it, to use the details to detach himself from the main component of the vision.

The ball of snarling teeth and claws that was eating his legs.

Harry could feel them, the fangs splintering bones, digging deep for the marrow, the cracking and the shaking. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes and endured, but the pain was still there, and his blood was flowing, and the fear that he would never walk again hit him hard enough to refuse him breath.

He couldn't see the creature that was eating him. It remained an indistinguishable ball of chewing. That didn't matter, Harry tried to remind himself. The last vision had only come true because Larkin had interfered with his sister's mind and made her attack Harry. This one would only come true if he could artificially do the same thing. The real point of this vision was that he was trying to kill Harry.

And he would do it with terror, if he could.

Harry retreated into himself, away from the pain, away from the idea of having mangled legs for the rest of his life, into a quiet serenity that he only found sometimes. Being tortured by the creature that had killed Lionel was one of those times, and walking into the Forbidden Forest to confront Voldemort was another. He brought the calmness up and out of him.

He couldn't choose the way he would die-from the moment he had seen death in his first Auror case, he had never been so foolish as to think that-but he could deny his enemy what he wanted.

He opened his eyes and smiled into the face of the blurry beast. "Can you hear me, Larkin?" he whispered around a mouthful of what felt like blood and shattered teeth. "You can't terrorize _me _into death. There's nothing you can do to me that I'm afraid of, not when I've already faced the Dark Lord that you despised."

A whistling, harsh shriek of frustrated fury cut past Harry's ears, and he gasped with the force of it. Then he rolled out of the vision and was lying on the floor of the Socrates office again, blood running steadily from his mouth.

Malfoy knelt a few feet away, eyes wide.

The sight of him gave Harry an unexpected anchor to haul himself out of the terror. He took a few deep, gasping breaths and flattened his hands against the floor. He had been terrified at points in the vision, yes, but at least he was used to suddenly seeing death and even feeling it, at greatly scattered intervals. Malfoy had no experience with these visions and no real understanding of what Harry-and probably Whitley and Rebecca Larkin-had seen.

"This time, he tried to convince me that I would die with some sort of beast devouring me from the legs up," he murmured, and managed to make his voice dry. "Perhaps so I would see it coming, since it would save the head for last. Bloody wanker."

"This is more than that," Malfoy said. His eyes were on the blood dripping from Harry's mouth. "How can we work if he keeps attacking you with visions that drop you like that?"

Harry smiled in a way he hadn't thought would happen at all. In some ways, Malfoy was the best partner he could have in this situation. Ron, before he retired to work in George's shop, would have been frantic with concern because of the "best mate" situation. Lauren Hale, his temporary partner for less than a year, would have thought he was making half of it up. And Lionel...

_He's dead. You don't have the right to think about him like that._

But Malfoy kept his eye on the important things. Harry shrugged. "The visions specifically will keep on coming. There's nothing that can stop them. But what you should do if one of them happens in the middle of battle is keep on fighting. Cast a Shield Charm over me, but it's more important that we catch Larkin before he kills again than that I survive."

"You have a death wish." Malfoy's voice was flat, certain.

Harry shook his head impatiently. "What it is is that I don't mind dying if it keeps a Dark wizard from killing someone else. That's not a death wish. That's just the way it _is. _You must feel something of the same sort yourself, or you wouldn't have become an Auror."

Quicksilver seemed to flow across Malfoy's face. He shook his head. "Never assume that you know the reasons I became an Auror," he said, in a voice that would have been more threatening if it hadn't broken at the end.

Harry shrugged. "Whatever. The answer is that you _can _still fight Larkin if you stop thinking that I'll die from the visions. I think Larkin is trying to find the thing I fear enough to kill me, the way he managed to find it with Whitley. But I'm more experienced with these visions. They horrify me, they hurt me, but they're not _new, _the way they were for Whitley and Rebecca. I have a better chance of surviving than any of his other victims do."

Malfoy frowned fiercely at him, but held out a hand. Harry leaned on his arm and let Malfoy help him up. His mind was flashing, churning, trying to link the symbol and the companions that they knew Larkin had to the power he had of causing fear in people.

And trying to come up with a counter for it. If Larkin _did _turn his attention to Malfoy-as he had to eventually, when he found out Malfoy was hunting him, even if he didn't think of Malfoy as a threat right now-then Malfoy stood a strong chance of dying the first or second time.

"It might be for the best if you took out some of the memories of things that frighten you and left them at home in a Pensieve tonight," Harry said cautiously. "He can't draw on those memories to create the visions, if you do that."

Malfoy turned his head and pinned Harry with a hawk's relentlessly haughty stare. "For fuck's sake, Potter. Will you set some _limits _on this flaw that you're attributing to him? He can reach out from any distance, he can use any kind of fear, he can control people's actions-now he can use memories, rather than just his knowledge of the people in question or random guesses?"

"There has to be some vulnerability," Harry agreed, a little breathless, as he leaned against his desk. He didn't want to remind Malfoy that that wasn't one of the criteria for identifying a twisted, just what they had to _hope _was true so they could fight Larkin. "But we don't know what it is yet. If you take out your memories and nothing happens, or something happens despite that, then it might give us a clue."

Malfoy's lips were pressed together, his nostrils twitching. Harry regarded him for a moment and wondered what the Head Auror thought he was doing, pairing them together. They couldn't trust each other, and Malfoy didn't take even simple suggestions well, coming from him. He would probably do better with some other partner.

As for Harry, it would serve him right if he never had a partner ever again, considering how he had failed Lionel.

On the other hand, he remembered the instinctive way they had saved each other in the Larkin home, and the way that Malfoy had known just how to get Harry back on his feet after the last vision. There might be some connection between them after all, some way to work together. But going after it consciously might not be the best way to find it.

"I'll try it," Malfoy said at last, in a tone that conveyed he was doing a _huge _favor for Harry, and Harry had better not ask for another one any time soon.

Harry nodded. "Thanks. Now, I think, we ought to go and look at Larkin's cell."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes-it seemed to be his go-to gesture for expressing general suspicion and distrust of Harry-and shook his head. "Why? Interviewing those who saw Whitley die is the best course, so that we can check if her symptoms were consistent with intense fear."

"We can do both," Harry said. "But so far, I don't see what the symbolism of a broken unicorn horn has to do with Larkin's abilities. From the cases they had us study, most twisted choose something that's fairly obvious once you understand them. They had a lot of facts on Larkin's background in that file, but nothing about that. Aren't you curious?"

"I would never own up to something so," Malfoy said, and visibly searched for a word that would hurt, "_childish_."

Harry grinned. "Don't worry. You can blame any curiosity on me. But I think the more we understand about Larkin, the better. Interviewing his mother about his reading produced enough information on his flaw to understand it."

"If you're right," Malfoy said.

"When you come up with a theory that fits the facts as well, then you can tell me," Harry retorted.

Malfoy was silent as he followed Harry towards the holding cells, though Harry could feel the man's eyes burning away on his back. Honestly, that didn't bother Harry much. As long as Malfoy did what he was bloody _told _and stopped acting so high and mighty, then Harry would accept just about any other behavior.

Well, and he could save Harry's life if he needed it, the way he had in the Larkin house. That would be nice, too.

* * *

Draco had to stop and close his eyes for a minute on the threshold of Larkin's cell. The stink of Dark magic was _everywhere _in the corridor outside it, and only intensified as they came closer to the small room, floating in the air like that bloody darkness powder that the Weasley twins had sold to him in sixth year.

"Malfoy? Are you all right?"

_At least he's mastered the right way to ask a question like that, _Draco thought, opening his eyes. Potter's tone was guarded, wary, as if he would draw his wand if he didn't get the right answer. In this world where anyone who used Dark Arts could become more warped by them than Draco had imagined, that was the right response.

"Fine," he said shortly, and checked his left arm under the cover of lifting his hand to wipe away the sweat. The Dark Mark there tingled briefly, but didn't yank his arm to the side. It would do for now. Draco braced himself a little more against the overwhelming miasma and stepped inside the cell.

Potter turned his head away from Draco and crouched over the fine lines of the drawing, having stepped with careless grace among the strung lines of wards that protected the cell from contamination. Draco performed the same dance and came to a stop beside Potter, staring.

The sketch was nothing grand or imposing, and wouldn't have attracted attention if the "ghosts" that helped Larkin escape from the cell hadn't signaled to knowing observers that they had a twisted on their hands. On first sight, Draco would have been tempted to dismiss the image as a jagged mass of lines. On the right side, slanting up towards the ceiling, was the larger part, rounded and smoothed on the base, with a few faint parallels across it that _might _have been intended to connote the spirals found on most alicorns. On the left side was the smaller, shattered point, broken like a puzzle piece. If the two pieces had been drawn together, Draco thought absently, it would been more obvious that they couldn't fit into one another, and others wouldn't have been so quick to call it a unicorn's horn.

"How did he draw this?" Potter murmured, as if to himself. "They didn't let him have the charcoal that it looks like it's drawn with, and there was none left behind in the cell..."

"He could have compelled someone into bringing it to him," Draco suggested, though he had to admit that it was rather hard to imagine a vision of fear that could convince someone they had to bring charcoal to a violent prisoner _right now. _

"He could have," Potter said, which was a better reception than Draco thought his idea probably deserved. "And then taken it with him when he went." He let his fingers hover above the drawing, and Draco winced in case he was about to touch it. The Dark magic was stronger there than anywhere else. But Potter drew his hand back, thank Merlin, and shook his head. "I feel I should understand it better than this," he murmured. "A broken unicorn's horn. Unicorns are symbols of-what? Virginity, beauty, innocence, healing..."

"Maybe it's not a horn," Draco said, to be contrary.

"What else would it be, then?" Potter rocked back on his heels and blinked up at him.

Draco bent close to the mark instead of answering. He had to study it more before he would have a good alternative theory. The skin on his balls tried to crawl up inside his body, but Draco had got good at ignoring Dark magic since he'd become an Auror. It was an unfortunate necessity of being a resonator, someone whose body responded to particular concentrations of it.

His vision altered, or maybe that was the angle of his neck as he tried to see things from a different side. And he recognized the symbol after all. All those nights studying Potions books when he had thought to go for a mastery instead of becoming an Auror came in useful after all as his brain _clicked _into place.

"It's an old representation," he murmured. "Of a Mandrake."

Potter made a face. "Those roots we had to take care of that time in Herbology? But it doesn't look like one."

Draco shook his head. "Of course not. Those are the modern Mandrakes, bred by wizards who were literalists and thought it should look like its name. The old ones were simply plants, and they were represented by the part that stayed embedded in the ground-it was thought-and the part that was pulled out and used." He let his finger hover above the break between the two parts of the drawing, though he took care to touch neither. "I think that Larkin's symbol is the root, the older plant."

Potter frowned in thought. Draco was vaguely surprised that he could tell. "All right. Any idea why a Dark wizard would care to take one as a symbol? I mean, a skull is fairly straightforward, and so are things like the wilted rose that one of them used."

Draco gave him a faint, grim smile. "Think about it, Potter. The root is used in multiple Dark potions. It shrieks when it's pulled from the ground. Shrieks in _fear. _And-" He drew in a deep breath, trying to ignore the reek of evil that came with it. That was really just a product of his overexcited brain. One could use Dark spells without becoming a twisted. "Of course."

"Of course what?" Potter was rapping his fingers against the wall. Draco gritted his teeth against the temptation to tell him to move his hand further away so he wouldn't brush against the material that had been used to make the drawing. Potter would surely touch it just to be contrary.

"That would be the reason he chose it as his symbol," Draco murmured. "There are a few old, banned potions that use the ancient mandrake. They cause fear. They cause hatred and terror, and they can make people attack." He felt an intense excitement coiling in his guts. If he could prove that Larkin had used potions instead of visions to attack Whitley and his sister, then Potter's visions could be put down to his usual talent, and that meant he would have proved Potter wrong as well as located Larkin's flaw.

Potter's eyes lit up, and he stood. "Let's go."

On the way up, Potter's palm brushed against the drawing.

Draco didn't have time to react. The shattered halves of the drawing snapped up and down, forming into massive jaws, then thrust out of the wall and attached themselves to Potter's legs, biting down hard. Potter screamed as his ankles, from the sound, broke.

Draco drew his wand and hurled himself into battle.


	3. Foiling the Future

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three-Foiling the Future_

For the second time in less than a day, he was in trouble and having to depend on Malfoy to save his life.

Harry hated being in this position, almost as much as he hated having his legs devoured from the ankle up.

He seized his wand and tried to concentrate though the pain of breaking bones, of splitting flesh, of knowing that his legs were vanishing into the jaws and perhaps hidden mouth of the enormous beast. It didn't work. The pain was too great, and so was the fear, surging through him and filling him with visions of a future where he couldn't walk again, where the Healers couldn't regrow what he had lost, where he had to depend on his friends for everything-

_No. That won't happen. I'll make sure, somehow, that it doesn't happen._

And then rational thought fled before the blinding _pain_, and try as he might to think of Voldemort and the Forest and all the other dangers he had faced before this and come out alive, he couldn't, because he couldn't think.

* * *

Draco had studied the jaws sticking out of the wall even as he began to cast his first spell, and realized they had few vulnerable places. No fur sheathed them, and no metal either; he had sometimes dealt with criminals who created servants and defenses out of machinery, as though they were Muggles. No, these were simple bone jaws, with the teeth sticking directly out of them. Little to do unless he could come up with spells that would attack them there, in that way.

He had studied some spells like that, luckily.

"_Dentes frango!"_ he roared, and through his mind passed a memory of a dusty afternoon sitting in his father's study, staring in silence at the spell in front of him and wondering if it would serve, finally, to humiliate Potter and make him cower before Draco in impressed, awed shock.

The jaws trembled as the invisible blow of the spell collided with them, but didn't loosen and didn't let Potter go. Draco cursed frantically, steadily, under his breath, and cast the spell again, louder and stronger this time. One of the fangs broke with a faint snapping sound, but the jaws had plenty of others left to carve Potter's flesh. And so much blood coated the floor now that Draco knew he was probably running out of seconds to choose the correct spell; at some point, they would have to lose Potter from loss of blood.

"Another one, then," Draco said, although there was no one there to hear him, not with Potter drowning in his own screams. "A Darker one." He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the reek that assaulted his senses and the delicate squirming in the middle of his stomach that said it would grow worse when he added his spell, and thought, not said, _Debilitatem creo._

The spell left him this time in a visible ripple of water, coursing along just above the surface of the floor in a wave and slamming into the nearer jaw, the bottom one. For a moment, it paused. Draco stepped back, wincing as his left arm vibrated and jerked and the reek grew stronger and stronger and stronger.

Then the jaws gave a great cry-the first noise Draco had heard them make, other than sheer chewing-and began to fall apart. Draco smiled grimly and caught himself with one hand on the wall. The Weakness Curse was designed to deal with extraordinary magical threats, up to and including nundu. Larkin was twisted, but even he didn't know about all the curses that existed and ways to defend against them.

Cracks spread up through the bone in the jaws, and weakened the teeth and made them fall out. The jaws released Potter and let him fall to the ground as they thrashed back and forth. Draco thought they were seeking to withdraw into the wall and become more charcoal drawings again, as if that would stop their imminent destruction.

It didn't. The cracks surged forwards, creating river-like patterns that stretched to the back of the jaws, and they simply broke apart, raining down in dust. There came a last, anguished cry, and Draco lunged forwards and dragged Potter clear, just in case the magic was vengeful enough to try for a final bite.

It wasn't, or else Draco's magic was too strong. They faded.

Draco knelt down beside Potter and examined his legs, hard as that was to do with the blood and the bone in the way. A short look convinced him that he wasn't able to do anything about it with his limited healing skills, and he winced and cast a few spells that would clot the blood. A second spell bound the shards of bone into place; Draco had the vague idea that the Healers would find it easier to treat Potter if they knew where all the pieces of the chewed part of his body had gone.

Then he used a Lightening Charm, and scooped Potter up.

"You saved my life."

Draco looked down. Yes, Potter was still conscious, his eyes locked on Draco as if he were having a revelation. Or another vision, Draco thought grimly, which he would _not _discount this time if it happened.

"Yes, Potter," he said. "I did. And next time, maybe you could refrain from touching the Mark full of Dark magic, hmmm?"

"W-warn me, and I will." That was all Potter seemed able to say, as his head drooped against Draco's shoulder and he shut his eyes. Draco snorted in disgust-honestly, who _wouldn't _make every effort to stay away from a marking left behind by a dangerous criminal just in principle?-and strode out of the cell, avoiding the wards by habit. He was already making up the report in his mind as he Apparated.

* * *

Harry woke in familiar surroundings, and leaned back with a grim little smile. No doubt he would see his favorite Healer soon, and get his favorite scolding.

_Well, it's not as though I go out intending to get hurt. Between the people I chase and the ones who try to kill me because they think that will give them a reputation to brag about in Knockturn Alley, the chances were always good that I'd end up here._

"Still determined to give me a heart attack, I see, Potter."

The Healer who stood in the doorway now, regarding him with no very favorable glance, was a tall black woman with tightly braided hair. Her hands were closed down so hard on the stack of parchment she held that Harry thought she was going to rip some of it. He half-hoped she did, so he could point out something that was her own fault and not his, as everything else in the world seemed to be.

"Hullo, Healer Tella," he said cheerfully. "That's one ailment you're not going to die of, since it would require you to have a heart to attack."

"The height of Auror wit," Healer Tella told any listeners-and there were a few listeners, actually, apprentices who clustered behind her with wide eyes-and moved in like a whirlwind, slapping the parchment down on a desk in the corner of the room and advancing on him with her wand held in front of her like a lion-tamer's chair. "I ask for a patient I can Heal, and they send me someone who wants to die before he's thirty."

"That gives me less than a year," Harry felt the need to point out.

"Only means that you'll step up your efforts." Tella cast a general diagnostic spell, and looked critically at the list of numbers and words that appeared in the air next to the bed. Harry craned his neck, but as usual, all the words except his name were abbreviations and meant nothing to him. Tella sighed. "You're going to live," she told Harry, in the tones of someone who'd been left at the altar.

"Oh, no," Harry said. "You still haven't broken your streak of keeping me alive."

Tella ignored that completely, but Harry understood why when she spoke her next words. She had something much worse to tell him than the mere flippant comment she could have dispensed otherwise, and she spoke with slow relish, now and then checking his expression to make sure he fully understood what he was hearing.

"All the bones in your feet were broken, and most were half-eaten," she said. "Most of your skin and flesh on your feet is gone as well. That means that we'll need to use Skele-Gro _and _the Epidermis Curse."

"Curse?" Harry asked faintly. It didn't sound like much of a Dark spell at first, the one to regrow skin on someone's feet, but the more he thought about it, the more possibilities he saw.

"Curse." Tella smiled at him and gestured for the terrified young mediwizard who attended her to enter. He stepped in, carefully keeping his eyes away from Harry's wrapped feet, and Harry understood that there might be more reasons here to be horrified than Tella's diagnosis. "You have no idea how much pain you're going to be in, Potter. Perhaps _this _will teach you not to have your feet half-devoured by mystical drawings on walls."

"You think I do this for fun?" Harry asked flatly, and then braced himself as the mediwizard raised his wand. Clearly, this would be too easy if Tella did it herself.

"I think that you do it when you could have chosen a different career a long time ago," Tella answered, leaning towards him and speaking more seriously than he'd ever seen her do. "And I think that because of your name, I'm pulled off cases more devastating to make sure that you're all right. You could, as a professional consideration to me, _stay away _from some of the things that have broken, splintered, shattered, and crushed you over the years."

Harry blinked. He'd never thought about it that way. "I never thought about it that way," he mumbled aloud, before he could stop himself. That was the sort of thing you didn't say around Tella, because one never knew what she would do in response.

"And that's the worst of it," she said back, in a quiet tone that was much more cutting than any joke she might have made, and turned and walked out the door.

Harry would have called some sort of half-arsed apology after her, but then the mediwizard unwrapped his feet, and Harry had to look away. He heard the stuttered syllables of an incantation, and gritted his teeth, but the spell to regrow his feet didn't hurt half as much as the chewing of them had.

Besides. Tella had given him enough to think about that he doubted his hours in hospital would be profitless.

* * *

Draco sighed and leaned back against the wall in the flat green room where it seemed all the Aurors with partners temporarily in hospital had been sent to wait over the years. He could see scraps of scarlet cloth caught here and there on chairs, and the table was littered with rings from cups of tea and coffee and the sort of periodicals that the St. Mungo's wizards seemed to mistakenly think Aurors would prefer. Draco looked at the cover of one called _Wickedness Weekly _and looked away again with a shudder. It was exactly the kind of shiny, glossy thing that was responsible for half the starry-eyed trainees who thought they would become Aurors in a month and solve crimes for a living without any hard work or blood on their hands.

They had thought he was that kind of Auror, when he applied.

Then Draco smiled grimly. No, they had thought he was wrong, and mistaken, and an idiot to believe that anyone would willingly work with him. But they had probably never believed he had that particular delusion. Everyone knew that Malfoys didn't sign up to do a bit of good in the world.

He looked up as he heard someone approaching. It was the tall Healer he had seen going into Potter's room earlier, who had made sure that he removed himself. She came to a halt in front of him and gave him a strict evaluating glance, as though to see whether he needed treatment of his own.

Draco gave her nothing back but a bland mask. He never knew how strangers would react to him, whether they would see the Malfoy or the Death Eater or the Auror first, and so he preferred not to give them a chance to see any real emotions.

The Healer shook her head at last and said, "Your partner will need to stay here overnight. You are welcome to stay or leave, but you should not go into his room." She pivoted on her heel and strode away, already checking a sheaf of parchment in her pocket and calling questions to another Healer, who hurried over to her waving a potions vial.

Draco scowled. _Just like Potter to get himself incapacitated on a case that really needs two of us._

But he could solve the Larkin case without Potter's help, certainly. In fact, Draco didn't know why he felt so abandoned. Potter had had a few ideas so far, but they might well be wrong, and he got in trouble. Draco should be able to do more by himself, because so far Larkin hadn't seen fit to target him.

He decided that he would check in with Potter once, since it was part of procedure. That way, the git couldn't claim later that Draco had gone out to do work that he wasn't part of and knew nothing about, and if it went wrong, he wouldn't be able to excuse himself from having some responsibility for it.

Draco met a young mediwizard slipping out of Potter's room, who gave him a nervous look before he turned away. Draco smiled at Potter as he stepped in. "What did you do to scare him?"

"Screamed."

Draco paused. Potter's face was pale, the beads of sweat that stood out on his forehead looking like dew. He caught Draco's gaze and shrugged. "It doesn't matter," he said. "How do my feet look?"

"Of all the questions that I never imagined hearing," Draco murmured, but bent down so that he could take a glance. Potter pulled the blanket back so that Draco could make it out.

Potter's feet looked like they'd been boiled in scalding water. The extreme stretched and shiny pink newness of his skin made Draco shake his head. He didn't know how soon Potter would be walking on them, though they did at least have the right number of toes and when Draco reached out, he thought he could feel the right bones beneath the skin.

"You'll live," he said coolly, pulling back. "But Healer Tella told me that you'll be here overnight, and I don't think the case can afford that long."

Potter, unexpectedly, grinned at him. "Right," he said, and sat up, reaching for the cloak that had been draped over the headboard.

Draco put a hand on the cloak and, with a silent raised eyebrow, demanded to know what the fuck he thought he was doing.

"The case can't wait," Potter explained. "It's been less than a day, and already there's been two attempts to kill us and interference with the mind of a third person. I have to get up and join you on it."

"Two attempts to kill _you_," Draco corrected him. "I think I might be safer working alone."

For some reason, Potter's shoulders hunched, and an emotion flashed through his eyes that reminded Draco of the way a rat had looked when it was cornered by the house-elves. Then he shook his head, and said, "It might be. But in that case, I'll stay in the office and consider your conclusions while you go out and do the dangerous fieldwork. We can't afford to have someone just lying uselessly in hospital."

"Even if that means that you might recover faster and be less useless to me in the end?"

Potter shook his head, silently denying the care that Draco was only trying to extend to him. "In the end, you're going to need two people to bring down Larkin. What happens if you find him and I'm still in hospital?"

"I can take him on my own," Draco said, and let his voice grow colder. Did Potter really think that Draco was so incompetent as an Auror that he would let a Dark wizard slip through his fingers? "Or I'll take a temporary partner. Auror Latham told us that there were Socrates Aurors available to help on other cases, because we're not always hunting twisted. I'll take one of them."

Potter sat on the edge of his bed for long moments, eyeing Draco. Then he nodded and lay back down, swinging those disturbing feet under the covers. He closed his eyes, which made his face seem much more blank. Draco shook his head. He should be _happy _about that. Potter had always been too expressive for his own good. And now for Draco's own good, since they were partners and his life might someday depend on how well Potter could control his face.

"All right," Potter said. "I hope that you get a solid lead tonight. Thank you for saving my life."

Draco stared at him for a few minutes, waiting, but apparently that was the end of Potter's heroism for tonight. With a loud sniff, Draco left the hospital room and nearly slammed into the young mediwizard who had healed Potter's feet, hovering in the corridor.

"What is it?" Draco asked. The mediwizard cringed, and Draco shook his head and asked again, more graciously.

"Um," the mediwizard said. "He really shouldn't walk on that new skin for twenty hours after it's healed."

"Tell _him _that," Draco said, and continued down the corridor, obscurely disappointed for some reason. "He's the only one who's going to profit from that warning."

* * *

Harry leaned back in his bed and closed his eyes. The mediwizard who had come back into the room to tell him not to walk on his feet for twenty hours avoided his gaze the entire time, and scurried back out. Harry reckoned that he'd met either Malfoy or Healer Tella as he was coming in to report.

Harry sighed and shifted. His new skin rubbed against the blankets and sent a flare of pain up his legs that only seemed to end at his knees. He winced. Yes, well. Perhaps walking around in shoes, especially the dragonskin boots that Aurors were supposed to favor and wear at all times, wouldn't have been the smartest idea after all.

And it wasn't Malfoy's fault that he'd said the exact words, about being safer working alone, that Lionel had, right before the end.

Harry allowed himself exactly two minutes to wallow in the pain, and then put that thought aside and turned to something else instead.

Larkin's flaw couldn't simply be sending his victims visions born of fear. That might have worked when he could reach out and inspire his sister to try and murder Harry, but he couldn't have known that Malfoy and Harry would go to his cell, or that Harry would be the one to touch the drawing instead of Malfoy.

Which meant Malfoy was right. There was more to this than a simple talent to reach across the distance and implant someone with a vision of whatever they most feared. Besides, it still didn't explain why he'd been able to murder Whitley but Rebecca and Harry had been affected less strongly.

Harry wasn't allowed to have his wand in St. Mungo's since what everyone involved had been careful to refer to only as the Beef Incident. But he had perfected a few spells without it, and he used one of them now, murmuring a Numbing Charm that froze the offending skin. Now not every brush against the blankets wasn't a blast of agony, and he could actually think.

So there had to be something else, some component to Larkin's flaw that both he and Malfoy had overlooked. How had Larkin _known _that they would go to the cell, and how had he _known _that Harry would touch the drawing?

There was only one scenario that made sense, although Harry barely wanted to admit it because it made Larkin so powerful. He circled up on it reluctantly, finally facing it head-on.

_I think Larkin can see the future, just like I can. But he has the power to send those visions to other people, to share them, and he can see more than just deaths. And he picks and chooses the visions that he shares based on what will cause the most fear. He sent Rebecca the vision of himself in prison, because he knew that would scare her into acting._

Which meant one thing Harry hadn't dared to consider so far. If the visions came true, that meant Larkin was going to end up in prison.

He was elated only until he remembered that the mission of the Socrates Corps, as Latham and others had explained it to him, was to kill the twisted. Not bring them in alive, not unless a whole slew of conditions were met, some of which involved there being no danger to anyone else in the capture.

What did it mean, then?

Harry leaned back, frowning, and wondered if Larkin was manipulating a vision of the past so it _looked _like the future. That meant he could send his sister a picture of himself in the holding cell, before he escaped, and scare her that way.

But, as Ron had learned before Harry had during Auror training and taught him, it was silly to think up additional explanations unless you turned out to need them. It was more likely that what Larkin was sending _was _a true vision of the future, and that he would end up in prison again at some point. Maybe they would corner him and manage to move him there without fuss after all.

_Or maybe he isn't going to stay there. _

Cold gripping his insides, Harry rang the small bell that would send vibrations traveling to one of a series of bells on the ward mediwitch's desk. She showed up a few minutes later, yawning through a hastily-placed hand and asking him in a mumble what he needed.

"Ink, parchment, an owl," Harry said tersely. "Or access to a Floo. Now."

The mediwitch stared at him, then hurried off. Harry leaned back in the bed and closed his eyes.

_I just hope that Larkin doesn't decide to send me another vision while I'm writing. Or Malfoy one._

* * *

When Draco stepped back into the Socrates office, he saw Latham coming towards him. Latham nodded once, and said, "We have someone who positively identified Larkin in the Leaky Cauldron. He hasn't moved in the last half-hour. We're going to go after him and kill him."

Just like that, Draco found himself swept up in a bustle of preparations, hauled away and pressed into service as part of a team, and thinking as he went that this might be the end of the case, and wouldn't Potter _hate _to miss it because he'd landed himself in hospital?

That thought didn't inspire as much glee as he'd expected it to, but it didn't inspire guilt, either. Potter was the one who had been wounded, and he must have known that certain developments might happen on the case while he was out of action.

As they left, Draco saw an owl spiraling down towards him. He shrugged as he Apparated. Whatever the message was, it could wait until the case was over.


	4. A Show of Force

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four-A Show of Force_

"He's in there."

Draco held back the eyeroll he wanted to give at Latham's simple, pretentious statement and contented himself with a tense nod. _Now _wasn't the point at which to take offense to comments like that, not when they would need all the Aurors on the raiding team to take Larkin.

_If we will._

Draco had to admit, his guard was falling in spite of himself. How hard to take could Larkin be, if he appeared from nowhere, sat down in the Leaky Cauldron, and calmly ordered himself a pint? Their informants said that he didn't appear to have his wand with him, since he hadn't drawn it even to cast a Warming or Cooling Charm on his drinks. The man might have decided not to run after all. Perhaps he wasn't a twisted, and reckoned that it would be better to face a few years in prison for theft, or a fine, than a life on the run.

Draco smiled to himself, then. He could admit that he wasn't exactly eager for Larkin to prove that he wasn't a twisted. It would make the first case he had worked on for the Socrates Corps fizzle out to nothing. But he would enjoy the chance to prove Potter and all his guesses about Larkin's flaw wrong.

"The conditions have been met?" That was an older Auror, one with fox-red hair and fox-brown eyes who reminded Draco unpleasantly of a Weasley as she rocked forwards on her heels. Draco searched through his mind and produced her name: Thomasina Warren.

"All of them," Latham said in a slightly trumpeting voice. He had a tendency to be impressed with himself beyond what his capacities showed he had to be proud of, Draco thought critically, but he was a good reader of body language. If he said that Larkin didn't look as though he was getting ready to move, then he wasn't. "There's no danger to any member of the public. We have containment wards ready for the capture, and there are few people in the pub anyway."

"There's no danger to any of us," added Simone Jenkins, on Draco's right side. She had long blonde hair, a faintly wistful look in her eyes, and the scariest smile that Draco had ever seen. She was Warren's partner. "We all know what Larkin's capable of, and we'll kill him at the first suspicious move."

"There's no sign of his wand," Latham said. "He's been separated from it, probably when he escaped. The Aurors who first investigated the scene in his cell did say there were broken scraps of wood about, consistent with the kind of wand that we know Larkin to have been carrying."

He turned expectantly to Draco, who cleared his throat and did his best to remember the conditions that he'd been told to memorize, the conditions that all had to be fulfilled before one could attempt a capture of a twisted, rather than a kill. "None of his companions have been seen since that initial escape," he said. "It's extremely likely that they're separated from him. Or were only delusions in the first place."

Latham nodded, smiling, and waited. Which meant Draco had to remember the fifth condition as well. He squinted at the imaginary page in his mind and wished that bloody Potter was here. That task would have been his if he hadn't got himself taken out of commission.

"And we have the resources to hold him, and to counter his flaw," Draco said. He ignored the squirm in the back of his mind that said they weren't sure what the flaw _was, _yet. He had told Latham Potter's guesses on the way over, and Latham had agreed that they sounded likely and added that putting Larkin in a cell with Dementors instead of humans as guards should solve the problem of him persuading someone else to open the doors. The Ministry still kept a few Dementors on hand, for emergencies.

Given that he'd _asked _about it, Draco really ought to have remembered that condition sooner than the one about the twisted's companions having been captured or killed. He hoped that no one else could make out the faint blush on his cheeks in the gathering dusk.

"Exactly." Latham faced the Leaky and held up his wand, saying something softly under his breath. Draco didn't hear what it was. Perhaps a curse on Larkin, perhaps a blessing on his wand or a prayer that his spells would fly true. His father had had similar ceremonies, not that that was something Draco should be thinking about. "Let's go."

They started towards the Leaky. Once, Draco thought he heard a flutter of wings, as though the owl he'd seen flying towards him before they left had caught up with him, but he didn't look up to see if it was true. All his consciousness was focused in front of him, on the battle to come.

* * *

"You don't need anything?"

Harry bit back a sigh and did his best to smile at the young mediwitch hovering in the door. He disliked the way that Healer Tella seemed to blame him for getting injured, but her attitude was better than the hero-worship that he sometimes inspired from the apprentice Healers. This was the third time that Ellen Garrett, as she'd introduced herself in a hushed voice, had come by to ask if he needed anything, and the fifth time she'd come by. The other two, she'd just stared with adoring eyes and forgot to speak before she stole away.

"No, thank you," Harry said, and waited until she was down the corridor before he closed his eyes and ground his teeth. _You can't make Malfoy respond to me. Fuck you, Malfoy, for going into danger without a care for what your partner thinks._

Of course, for all Harry knew, they could have captured Larkin by now. He could be safely in a holding cell. Or Malfoy might be at home, sleeping the sleep of the unjust. There was no way for Harry to be certain, because he was stuck in this _fucking hospital _and no one would tell him anything until morning. He'd ask Garrett, since she was eager enough to help, but he doubted she knew anything.

_If Larkin's in a cell, then he's going to get out again. You know that. Any pretense of coming along quietly will be a ruse._

Harry hissed, and then hissed for a different reason as his regrown skin brushed against the blanket again. Yes, he knew that, but he didn't see what he could do even if he broke out of hospital and went to the Socrates office or Malfoy's flat-wherever that was, Harry would have to steal a file to find out-and warned him in person. He couldn't walk. Most of the time, when someone told him to stay put, it was because they wanted to hide information from him or were worried about what would happen if the famous Harry Potter died on their watch. This time, it was pure and simple fact.

He closed his eyes, deciding that he would have to _try _and get some sleep, so that when the moment came that he could walk again, he wasn't useless to Malfoy and the hunt for Larkin because of his exhaustion.

And the vision blew in on the wings of the wind.

This time, it was a perfect, clear picture, without any of the inconsistencies or blurriness he'd noted in the other visions that Larkin handed him. Harry saw Malfoy rounding a corner, his hair flying and his mouth set in that prim little way Harry remembered from Hogwarts. It probably meant something else now. He saw Larkin laughing, aiming his wand. They were outside, beneath a sky grey and sagging with rain. Small puddles gleamed on the cobblestones. Tiny rivers rippled away.

The curse that left Larkin's wand froze Harry, not because of the incantation-Larkin must have spoken it nonverbally-but because of the way it looked. A crawling mass of crystalline light, with tendrils and hooks coming out of the sides.

The same curse that had killed Lionel, in the end, although not before plenty else had been done to him.

And Harry leaped from the side and took the curse on his own side, his own skin. Larkin laughed. The world flared around Harry like a sun, and then died down to heat and to pain and to acid-like sensations eating their way steadily into his major organs. He knew the curse. He would be dead inside a minute.

This was the future. This was the way he would die. Nothing could save him this time, there was no innocent explanation for what he saw, and although the pain was intense, Harry no longer believed that Larkin was simply reaching out with pictures of what the victim feared. Information on the curse that had killed Lionel would be in the Gina Hendricks case file, of course, but no one would know why Harry had so hated that curse, because no one knew what Lionel had meant to him. Not even Lionel.

Harry would die this way because there was no way that he could let another partner die.

The pain faded. The vision faded. Harry spent a few minutes with his eyes closed, glad that he hadn't tried to leave hospital after all, getting the details straight in his head.

It couldn't be tonight. The scene had been filled with the light of day, although muted and challenged by the rain. And Harry had had time to fling himself in between the curse and Malfoy, which argued that he wasn't still staggering along on feet that were little more than slabs of raw meat. It would be tomorrow at the earliest.

That meant Larkin would escape, yes, and perhaps damage someone in the process. But not Malfoy. It wasn't as urgent as Harry had thought that Malfoy receive his message.

He began to think of other things that he should do. Of course, he did hope to survive, but there had been no indication so far that the futures Larkin's visions showed could be changed, which meant he had to prepare for the worst.

His will was intact. That had been something to occupy himself with, the long weeks he lay in hospital after the Gina Hendricks case. He would write farewells to his friends explaining what had happened, in case he died and no one else knew why. With any luck, he would explain this to Ron in the pub a fortnight from now, but he couldn't count on luck.

And a letter to Malfoy.

Harry sat up when he thought he was strong enough and looked towards the door. Garrett hovered there, sure enough. She flushed when she realized that he'd caught her and started to duck out of sight, murmuring in a confused way.

"No, don't go," Harry called after her softly. She paused and looked back at him. "Ink and parchment? Four sheets." One for Ron and Hermione. One for the other Weasleys. One for the Ministry, so that Malfoy could be cleared of any complicity or blame in his death, if it happened.

One for Malfoy.

Garrett took off at a gratifying pace. Harry bowed his head into his hands and breathed for a bit.

They had said, when they looked at Lionel's body and discussed how the curse had killed him, that there must be a counter somewhere. The Killing Curse was famously the only one that couldn't be stopped or turned aside. _That _was the fearsome thing about it; it didn't kill painfully, but it was unstoppable.

There was a cure for what had killed Lionel, for the curse that would kill Harry, somewhere out there.

But they hadn't found it yet.

* * *

"Auror Malfoy? So nice to meet you at last."

Larkin looked exactly like the photograph in his file, the one that Draco had privately marked as untrustworthy, and less like his sister than Draco had assumed. He lifted a full mug of beer in a toast to Draco, not deigning to pay attention to the other Aurors, while his gaze did a slow crawl over Draco's body.

"Alasdair Larkin," Latham said, taking the lead. His voice sounded too loud in the pub, although there were a few people there staring at them and pressing back against the walls, and the echoes of their voices had only recently died. Draco shook his head to clear it. There was a ringing in his ears that he distrusted. "You may surrender and come with us quietly. That would be best for you. We will undertake to defend your life from any associates you have who might-"

"Oh, come off it," Larkin said, with a careless gesture of his hand that Jenkins and Latham both flinched back from. Larkin didn't seem to notice; he was still staring at Draco. "We both know that you came here to kill me, not arrest me."

Someone in the corner made a noise, and Latham's face tightened. Draco knew why. The Socrates Corps didn't officially exist. They would have to order Obliviators into the pub the moment they were done here, since they had no hope now of making it look like an ordinary arrest.

Draco spoke up. If Larkin was interested in talking to him, then Draco might as well provide some means to keep him fixated. "Are you going to try to make us fear you? I was told that's somewhat of a preoccupation of yours."

Larkin stood in a single smooth, flowing movement. Jenkins and Warren cast binding curses at the same time, tying his arms behind his back and his legs together. He started to fall over, but caught himself on the chair. His eyes were wide and never moved from Draco's face, and in them, for the first time, Draco caught a glimpse of something that might have been fear.

It was gone in seconds, of course, and Larkin lowered his eyes to the floor and shook his head. "You don't understand the nature of fear," he said softly. "So sweet, the way it scents the air. So wonderful, the way it can stretch the nature of time and make a moment seem an hour." He looked up with a dazzling smile, and if it hadn't been for the darkness in his eyes, the knowledge he had of his crimes, and the reek of Dark magic around him, Draco might even have thought he was innocent. "Do you understand the nature of time? I suspect your partner knows more than you do."

Warren put a gag on Larkin before Draco could answer, and Jenkins went over to reassure the other people in the pub; Draco knew that had more to do with keeping them there until the Ministry could call in the Obliviators. The capture had gone surprisingly well, Draco thought, his heartbeat finally beginning to slow. Of course he wanted to find out what Larkin had meant by looking at him specifically and addressing him the way he had, but on the other hand, those were truths that could be winkled out of him in interrogation once they were back at the Ministry.

Then Larkin looked at Latham, and smiled.

And Latham fell to the floor, spasming.

Draco took a step towards him, and then stopped. From behind Larkin's gag came the deep sound of muffled laughter. Warren let out a loud curse and bent over Latham, who was screaming, soundlessly. Draco turned to the pub's fireplace, thinking of opening a Floo connection to the Ministry.

Latham finally did scream with some sound behind it, and then clutched at his chest. The next moment, he stopped breathing. Warren began to cast healing charms, but Draco turned to look at Larkin, at the expression of satiated satisfaction on his face, and knew it was too late.

While the others gathered around Latham, calling and staring and trying to make him respond, Larkin leaned back in his bonds and looked pleased with himself and the world. Draco held his eyes until he stopped smiling and raised his brows. Draco leaned in and removed the gag. His left arm burned with the Dark magic just released, but he knew that Larkin hadn't raised his wand. This was the operation of the flaw.

"What did you do?" he whispered. "Fear, the nature of time...I don't understand them, but I want to."

Larkin ducked his chin, gaze intent on Draco's expression as if he were looking for evidence of what he'd just said. Then he shook his head and sighed. "You don't, really," he said. "Besides, I've already taught all the truths I have to give to your partner. You should listen to him if you want to know what they are."

And he remained silent throughout the bustle of the next few hours, with Obliviators called in for the regular clients and the people who worked in the Leaky, the arrival of Healers from St. Mungo's who couldn't save Latham's life but did confirm that he'd died in the same way that Whitley did, and the transportation of Larkin to his cell. He went quietly, and sat down in the center of his cell as though he was too thick-skinned to need a bed. Draco did insist on a search of his robes, but found no charcoal or anything else that could make a drawing like the one that had chewed up Potter.

Larkin met Draco's eyes as he was leaving the cell and nodded thoughtfully. "You don't need my lessons," he said. "You know them already."

Draco didn't touch the Dark Mark, but it took a supreme effort on his part. "I would be less haughty than you, if I were in your position," he said softly. "At least I won't spend the rest of my life in Azkaban."

This time, the smile Larkin gave him was pitying. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes.

Draco stepped into the Socrates office to retrieve his cloak that he'd left there, and an owl leaped up from the window and practically screamed at him to take the message in its beak. Draco stared at it. He recognized it as the bird that he'd seen circling down to him before he Apparated to the Leaky Cauldron, but he had no idea why it would have waited for him here instead of pursuing him.

Perhaps the constant Apparitions back and forth from the Ministry that he'd done and the presence of Larkin's magic had deterred it, he thought, and stretched out an arm. The owl landed and dropped the message into his hand. Draco unfolded it as best he could, since the owl refused to move; he had to give it two whole biscuits before it seemed satisfied and soared over to sit on the windowsill again.

_Malfoy,_

_ I've been working it out, and I think Larkin does see the future. He can share the visions, though, unlike me. If he showed his sister a vision of himself captured, that's what's going to happen, but I don't think he'll stay there, and any Auror who goes after him could be in danger._

_Potter._

Draco closed his eyes and shook his head. "Potter, saint of useless information," he muttered.

He considered going to over to St. Mungo's for a moment. He could discuss the letter and Latham's collapse with Potter, and perhaps they could work out what Larkin had shown Latham to cause _him _to die. The Healers had said that Latham had a weak heart, and that it had burst. He could have died at any time in the next year, or decade, or week. It seemed information Larkin was unlikely to have access to, unless his flaw included a way to pluck memories from his victims' heads...

Draco shook his head violently. _No_. He was tired, and not thinking clearly. The Healers would deny him admission to Potter at this late hour, anyway. He was going home, and going to sleep.

The most he would do was consent to pick up Whitley's file on the way out of the office, to see what the Healers had said _her _cause of death was.

* * *

By the time that the soft bells that chimed to tell the morning Healers to begin their shift had rung, Harry was almost calm. He would do his best to survive Larkin's curse, and he would leave the letters for his friends and Malfoy only if he couldn't.

And he also prepared a small, nasty surprise of his own, so that he might at least stand a chance of taking Larkin out if he was dying. He doubted Larkin would expect it of him. The most famous Auror in the Department wasn't supposed to know Dark magic.

Healer Tella came with the start of the morning, to examine him and give him a disgusted look when Harry asked if he could leave. "There isn't an urgent case this morning, but I still resent attending someone who doesn't care if he lives or dies," she told the wall.

"Noted," Harry said. "But I have an appointment to keep this morning, and I want to know if I can walk."

Tella didn't respond as he had expected, instead taking a step away from the bed and staring at him. "You're planning again," she said, not raising her voice. "You're planning a way to get yourself killed, and you expect me to let you out of here to do it instead of locking you right away in the Janus Thickey ward."

Harry blinked. He had no idea how she could tell that he expected to die, but he couldn't let it stop him. "This isn't what you think," he said. "The case that my partner and I are working on-"

"I meant it," Tella said, moving away from him with calm, slow steps, never taking her eyes from him. "I resent that I'm called to attend to you and it takes me away from other cases. I resent that you try so hard to commit suicide and they pat you on the head for it. I resent that you have an Order of Merlin when braver people than you die every day."

Harry nodded back at her, and hoped that it didn't look frantic. "That means that you ought to want to get me out of hospital as much as I want to go," he said. "So if we can sign-"

"But I'm not going to let you die on me," Tella said. "If only because I _know _that I'll be blamed." She reached out and rang the bell on the wall Harry had never seen a Healer use, because he wasn't a patient who was dying of poisoning or going insane at his Healer. "This is the end."

Harry tensed, then swung his legs out of bed and lunged for the door the moment Tella was distracted by the noise of running footsteps outside. If he could just get past her, then he thought he would have a chance to meet Larkin the way he was supposed to and save Malfoy's life-

Tella's Body-Bind caught him and dropped him straight to the floor. Harry swore and cursed and struck out, but he couldn't move a muscle for long, as the spell settled over him and strengthened. He stared furiously at Tella, who bent over him and stared right back, unimpressed.

"You are not going to die," she said. "No matter how much you want to." And she turned and spoke to the mediwizards who had come running at the bell about moving him to the Janus Thickey ward.

Harry lay there cursing steadily inside his head. He had to get out of here somehow, if Larkin's visions were true, and meet his destiny. But he had no idea at the moment how that would happen.

_If Larkin's visions were true..._

Harry tried to force himself to relax. If they were always true, then he would be there, because he had to be, because that was the future.

But he still didn't know if he had identified Larkin's flaw correctly, or if some of the visions could be real and others false.

As he lay there, fuming and trapped and trying furiously to calculate angles of light from his memory so that he would know how many hours he had left, he thought he could hear Larkin's laughter inside his head.


	5. Flight

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five-Flight_

Draco woke up early, and padded over to make himself a cup of tea, grumbling under his breath and flinching where the sun shone through his kitchen window. He had lived away from his parents for seven years, and he still hadn't got used to mornings yet.

Or the lack of house-elves.

Draco's fingers closed hard on the handle of the tea-cup, and then he took a deep breath and shook his head. No. He wasn't going to think about that, no matter how tempting it was. Really, it should have been easier to avoid the thoughts. He had a full life, and his parents had thrown him out of the Manor the moment he began Auror training. If anyone, he should miss Daphne, and their engagement, and the normal life he had thought they would have before finding out she had committed murder.

He should miss Kellen.

Draco grimaced and flexed his left hand, smashed on the same case that had killed Kellen. His hand was healing, the tiny, innumerable breaks in the bones cured by proper and prompt attention at St. Mungo's, as well as the application of Skele-Gro. There would be no healing for Kellen.

What had been done to him before the end was-

Draco cut the thought off and shook his head. He was getting nothing accomplished by sitting here, staring out the window, and remembering the past. The present was the file on the table, the partner he had in hospital, and the possible link between Latham's death and Whitley's.

Reading the file told him almost nothing. The Healers had probed into her body and discovered that she had a weak heart, the same flaw that had killed Latham. Again, she could have died at any time. That it was the night after Larkin had been arrested was, Draco had to admit, a major coincidence, but he still didn't understand what vision Larkin could have fed her that would have scared her to death.

It was attributing too much omniscience to Larkin to assume that he knew about everything: Potter's visions, Latham's and Whitley's weak hearts, the way that his mother would betray him and his sister would try to stay loyal to him. Draco sipped his tea and grimaced his way through a series of silent admissions.

What Potter had theorized still made the most sense. If Larkin had the ability to see the future, and share those visions with the people he wanted to terrify, then he could have warned his sister he would end up in prison. He could have known that the marking on the wall of his cell would come to life and try to devour Potter's feet. He could have shown Latham and Whitley the most simple and effective visions to kill them: their hearts bursting or exploding. They had to have lived with that fear most of their lives. Intensify it, and it would happen.

_Then what's his next step? _

Draco leaned back in his chair and thought about that. Surrounded by Dementors, Larkin wouldn't reach out to influence someone, to give them a vision that would terrify them into freeing him. Draco would be surprised if he could still use his flaw anymore when surrounded by the ghastly creatures.

_Yet we never did prove that there's a limit to the distance that he can cover when reaching out to affect someone. _

Draco swallowed, and decided that he wouldn't think about that anymore. Larkin was in prison, with no sign of his companions and his wand safely taken from him. He had concluded the case, closed it. It was regrettable that Latham had died, and Whitley, and that Potter was in hospital. But he didn't see anything else that he could do now.

With that in mind, he laid the files aside and reached for his cloak. He might as well go to St. Mungo's and check on Potter.

* * *

Being in the Janus Thickey ward wasn't as bad as Harry had expected. He had a room to himself at the moment, and a glass of water on the table beside his bed enchanted to replenish itself when he needed it, and a choice of books that would prop themselves up in front of him and turn their pages.

Of course, his hands were manacled together and his legs were attached to the foot of the bed with chains and a Healer kept checking on him every ten minutes. And there were the moans and screams and giggles of the more hopelessly lost from beyond the door. But Malfoy would say that you couldn't have everything.

At the moment, Harry was choosing to lie back on his bed and close his eyes. Acting calm and sane might convince Tella that he really _wasn't _going to rush off and kill himself the minute she turned her back. If she didn't change her mind, then rest would let him use his wandless magic more easily against any enemies who got in his way.

One way or another, the vision that Larkin had sent him would come true. Harry stirred restlessly in his bonds as he thought about it, and then stilled as the suspicious Healer looked through the door. She nodded at him as if to say that she was proud of him for being such a good boy, and turned away as someone called her name.

They had taken his papers away from him, but Harry was sure they'd keep them safe. Tella's wariness of being blamed if something happened to the Famous Harry Potter meant that they would almost _have _to. They could be blamed too easily if they lost something that turned out to be important.

So he would die, and the letters would be delivered.

He _did _wish that the vision had extended long enough for him to be sure what would happen to Malfoy and Larkin. His death was going to be bloody useless if Larkin took Malfoy out with another curse a few seconds later.

_You're getting upset again. _If his heart beat too fast, the charms on the room would warn the Healers. Harry forced himself to lie flat and calm, and to think beyond his death, about what would happen with Ron and Hermione.

He missed a chance to speak to his friends most of all. He wanted to see Ron's astonishment when he understood that Harry was partnered with Malfoy and that it had lasted a day without them killing each other. He wanted to see Hermione smile at him and pat his arm and explain that she'd always known Malfoy would be less of a git if he had the chance, and wasn't Harry glad that it was working out this way?

There were a few people in the Ministry he'd like to speak to, but not many. Ron didn't work there anymore. Harry and the current Head Auror had a firm, practical acquaintance, but not much of a friendship. His last partner but one, Hale, would more than likely turn her back if she saw him coming. He hadn't had a chance to get to know the other Aurors of Socrates Corps yet, in the way he'd like to. And Lionel...

_Maybe I'll see him again. Maybe I'll get to see Sirius and really get to know my parents. Maybe I'll get to joke with Dumbledore and apologize to Snape, finally._

Harry felt a deeper relaxation than he'd been able to feign so far invade him. Some of the people he knew felt he was dangerously volatile and too fearless about death, but they didn't understand. It was just that Harry had faced death since he was young, and chosen a career that he knew wouldn't lead to a peaceful life, and had lost so many people. He had all of them waiting to welcome him.

At least, if the afterlife was anything like the vision he'd had of Dumbledore in King's Cross. Harry really didn't know if it was. If it was darkness and nothing else, that might be preferable in some ways.

"He's my partner, and I _insist _on seeing him."

Harry turned his head and blinked. Malfoy's voice was coming from beyond the door, and he was speaking as if someone had tried to stop him from doing something he wanted. Well, if seeing Harry was something he wanted to do, that would probably be true, but Harry couldn't imagine why they would keep Malfoy out of the Janus Thickey ward. Or that Malfoy would be that eager to visit him, in fact. He struggled to sit up, and the Healer who'd been baby-sitting him came and stared at him threateningly again. Harry glared back.

Another Healer was responding to Malfoy, his words soft enough that Harry had to concentrate to make them out. "I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy, but Healer Tella thinks that Auror Potter should rest as much as possible. He tried to make his way out of hospital earlier this morning, and frankly, he's not well enough to do that. He doesn't need people from the Ministry urging him to take up extra cases."

There was a long, thick silence that made Harry think Malfoy was considering the Healer's words, or else had gone away. Instead, he replied in a voice that had chips of ice floating in it. "You called me Mr. Malfoy. That should have been Auror Malfoy."

"Should it have?" The Healer no longer sounded calm, but smug. Harry had spent a long time distinguishing between the two emotions, since most of the Dark wizards he hunted tried to use both. "I see the robes, but I hear they're giving them to anyone these days."

Harry closed his eyes. As clearly as if he was there, he could see Malfoy narrowing his eyes and resting his hand on his wand, and then letting his fingers spring away as if burned. That would make him look aggressive in the eyes of anyone who responded to the Healer's call and was prejudiced against him, and in hospital, that was almost everyone.

Malfoy folded his arms. Harry knew that even though he couldn't hear the creak of one kind of cloth against the other from here. It was the sort of thing he would do, and Harry felt as if he were moving in tune with Malfoy now, a kind of connection that good Aurors were supposed to have with their partners but which Harry had never experienced except once or twice with Ron.

_And with Lionel..._

He paused to chase the thoughts away, and that meant he lost the connection with Malfoy. He couldn't tell, except through common sense, which emotions underlay Malfoy's voice or which expression he would wear as he said, "Please tell _Auror _Potter that I am here to see him. The information concerns the current case we are working in, which put him in hospital in the first place. I believe that he will rest more easily when he hears what I have to say."

_Note, _Harry thought. _When Malfoy's angry, he takes the contractions out. _

"I don't see why I should." The Healer was palpably smug now. "Not when you'll probably take the chance to stir up a little trouble among the patients if I let you back there. That's what Malfoys do, isn't it? Especially the Dark Lord's torturers?"

Malfoy didn't hiss or catch his breath, but the silence after the Healer's words was more profound than if he had. Harry winced in concert with him, and wondered how the Healer had known about that. He hadn't thought it common knowledge among those who didn't have a connection to Voldemort lurking in the back of their heads.

Harry cleared his throat. His baby-sitter leaned in and tried the benefit of a little extra glare, but Harry shook his head. "I want to see my partner," he said, pitching his voice so that the stupid Healer down the corridor could hear him as well. "It's important not to _agitate _me, you know. I might start screaming and get some of the more dramatic patients upset if you did that."

The Healer watching him paled. Harry gave her a nasty smile. He half-wanted to apologize, when the Healer backed away; he knew they were only trying to do their jobs, and Tella wouldn't have moved him here if she hadn't thought he was a danger to himself. But preventing Malfoy from reaching him and sharing important information about Larkin was not on.

There was an abrupt murmur of voices, and Malfoy appeared in the door of the room. The man behind him was trying to act stern and like he was in control, but he threw one glance at Harry and turned away, hastily scurrying off. Harry snorted.

"Why do they have you manacled like this?" Malfoy sat down on a chair next to the bed and stared at him. "Did you really try to leave hospital on your own?"

Harry shrugged. "Larkin sent me another vision. Excuse me for thinking that I needed to get out there and make sure that you were all right, and to get the latest information on the case if possible."

Malfoy leaned forwards and studied Harry's face from so close that Harry crossed his eyes. Malfoy jerked and pulled back a bit, but he was shaking his head. "Larkin's in prison now. He's going to stay there. He _did _kill Latham, though."

Harry jolted. He hadn't known Auror Eric Latham that well, but he _had _been the one who welcomed them to Socrates Corps and gave them the details they would need to fit in there. "I didn't know," he whispered, and then focused on Malfoy. "Anyway, he won't stay in prison. Get me out of here."

"Are your feet healed well enough to walk?" Malfoy cast a frowning glance down at the chains around Harry's ankles. "I believe that Healer Tella said it would take you twenty hours to recover from the spell. It hasn't been twenty hours since we arrived here. Seventeen, yes."

Harry stifled a groan and tried to think, tried to recapture the connection he had felt with Malfoy when the idiot Healer challenged his right to come in here. This had never been an issue that he had to worry about with Ron, who was happy enough to help him sneak out of hospital. He hadn't been together long enough with Hale to worry about it. Lionel...

Probing the memories was like probing a sore tooth with his tongue, but he did his best. Yes, Lionel would have helped him, and grinned wildly all the time at the daredevil thrill of it.

Malfoy was different. Harry would have to think of an argument that made sense to him, rather than depending on his sense of fun to handle it. He released a long, slow breath and said, "Seventeen hours is close enough to twenty that it doesn't matter, I should think. And perhaps we _can _defeat Larkin's visions if we move fast enough. Or maybe they don't always mean what he thinks they mean. After all, he seemed to believe that I was watching my death in those visions he sent me, but you saved me each time."

"What was the vision you had this time?"

_Shit. _Because while Malfoy might not like him, Harry didn't think he was the sort to let the Great Auror Harry Potter sacrifice his life for him. If only because the paperwork that he'd have to deal with, and the nasty publicity, would be enormous.

"That I'd jump in front of you when he cast a curse at you," Harry said, which was functionally true. "Is it raining today? That was in the vision."

Malfoy leaned back in the chair and placed his hands flat on his knees. Harry tried to curb his impatience and just watch. _What did I say to set off his alarms? _

* * *

Something was wrong.

Draco didn't know _what_, but he had the sense to realize something was. And after years in service to the Aurors, he was wise enough not to ignore his instincts.

Fighting back the instinctive temptation to think that it was _Potter, _and something was always wrong with him, Draco focused on the pale, sweating face instead of the bonds that held Potter in place. He could see why Healer Tella had thought she had to imprison Potter for his own good. He looked desperate, and his eyes couldn't meet Draco's for long. They darted off to the sides, as though he believed Larkin would come through the walls and project a vision at him that way.

_He's used to these visions, I thought. He shouldn't feel so off-balance merely because Larkin fed him new ones. Ones where he died. _Draco knew what he would feel if he saw, and felt, his own death happening to him, but that was because his mind was unprepared for it. Potter would have more experience, the kind of experience that Draco thought indispensable for dealing with the visions.

"Explain the vision to me in more detail," he said. "Where were we?"

Potter's eyes returned to him, with a nervous little flutter that Draco also noticed and distrusted. _He's lying. But why? _

Unfortunately, two reasons, ones that might complement each other, occurred to Draco at once. Potter wanted out of hospital, and if he could come up with a vision that would require him to be back and working on the case, at least to all external appearances, he would tell the lie. He also desperately wanted to be right about Larkin's flaw. Perhaps the "vision" he had received didn't exist or said something else, something that gave Potter a reason to doubt its truth. But his pride couldn't take the blow of thinking he was wrong, so he created this instead.

Draco could feel a slow swelling of disgust from the bottom of his throat. He didn't _want _to spend time playing nursemaid to someone who neglected his own health, and the truth, in pursuit of being right. Draco had his pride, but he had learned to make it flexible, and if he was wrong, he could admit it.

"Explain," he said, and saw Potter jump at the snap in his voice. Draco didn't care. _He ought to have told the truth from the beginning if he wanted sympathy._

"I couldn't tell exactly where we were," Potter began. "You were coming around the corner of a building. Larkin was waiting ahead. I didn't see myself in the vision at first, but Larkin cast a curse at you, and I came from the side and jumped between it and you. I didn't see what happened after that, whether Larkin got away or whether you killed him or captured him."

"Captured, hopefully," Draco murmured, before he remembered that he believed Potter's vision untrue. He shook his head and leaned closer. "You said that the weather was rainy?"

"Yes," Potter said, and bobbed his head several times as well, as if he believed the single word wouldn't reassure Draco. _Of course it wouldn't, not if he's a liar. _One thing Draco had learned about chronic liars-partially from his father, and partially from being partnered with two during his training-was that they lived in a state of paranoia, needing constant signs from others that they accepted the lies as truth. "Not entirely, more of a drizzle, but enough that I thought you would slip when you rounded the corner."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Not enough to go on, Potter. And even if it is, we can wait a few hours for your feet to heal." That was a reasonable compromise, he believed. If there was something to the vision, if it wasn't a mere excuse for Potter to get back into a position of power where he could control how the case went, then he wouldn't mind waiting those few hours.

Potter bared his teeth. "No, we _can't. _He could be escaping now. What if someone innocent dies because we waited?"

Draco shook his head slowly. "You believe that all his visions come true, and yet you can claim that? We can't prevent his killing someone, in that case."

"I didn't _see _anyone die, in the vision," Potter said, and his eyes fluttered again. _Yes, he's lying. _Certainty moved deep in Draco, and the only question now was when he would show that he didn't accept this "vision." "But just because that was true doesn't mean someone else might not die. And the problem is-the problem is, in the past, the visions I saw _could _sometimes be prevented, if we got there in time to stop the murderer from killing the victim. I think that might be blending with Larkin's gift, because the visions I see from him are so similar. So perhaps we can stop it, if we get there in time."

Draco shook his head again, and stood up. Potter looked up at him hopefully, then dropped the expression when Draco let the silence go on, let his eyes bore into Potter's face as he said nothing. Potter winced and shifted his weight and looked away.

"You won't trust me," Draco said. "There are either things about this vision that you're not telling me, or Larkin isn't behind it, or you never had one."

Potter snapped his teeth at Draco, increasing his resemblance to a chained dog. "If you're going to argue that the visions I had in the office, the visions you _saw _me have, aren't real-"

"Not those," Draco said. "Just this."

"_Why, _for God's sake?" Potter made his bonds rattle as he leaned forwards. "What would I have to gain by-"

"Because," Draco said, lowering his voice to a vicious hiss so that the Healers wouldn't hear and come to scold them for disturbing the peace and silence of the ward, "you want to prove me wrong. You want to be the one to have the glory of capturing Larkin, if he does escape. You want-"

He paused, because Potter had settled back against his pillow and was shaking his head. There was a grim, awful expression on his face, and Draco didn't know what to make of it. Perhaps Potter had gone half-mad from confinement and lack of sleep. His eyes certainly seemed bloodshot.

"Glory," Potter said. "Yes, of course. My part in the vision couldn't be different. I couldn't need to be there just because I need to be there."

Draco stared at him, silently willing Potter to meet his eyes and tell him the truth. But Potter kept his head turned away this time, and said nothing no matter how long Draco waited. Draco finally hissed beneath his breath and turned away, disappointed and furious at himself for being so.

A Patronus came bolting up to him the minute he stepped outside the door of Potter's room, a delicate silvery antelope with long, curving horns that swept over its back. It crashed to a stop when it saw him, reared, pawed the air in front of his face with both hooves, and panted in Warren's voice, "Larkin's escaped. Come to the Socrates office."

Then it dissolved, and Draco swore and went running, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that prickled up and down his neck.

* * *

Harry had heard the Patronus's message. Oddly, a heavy calm descended on him as he listened to Malfoy running away.

_This is it, then. He's not going to help me. I'll just have to do it myself._

He lifted his chained wrists and closed his eyes. He rarely did this in front of other people, but it could work.

The magic burst out from within him, uncoordinated, wandless, taking the easiest path to escape. The manacles binding him sizzled and shattered. Harry rolled out of bed, found himself still held by the foot-cuffs, and paused to pick them off. His feet didn't look too bad, and they bore his weight when they hit the floor.

It would have to do. He had an appointment to keep.


	6. What Follows

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six-What Follows_

The Healers weren't prepared for Harry to come blasting out like a dragon from a cave; that was plain from the way they scrambled. Harry lowered his head, aware that there was blood on his teeth from biting his tongue the way he had, and charged straight ahead, calling for his wand in his mind.

He heard a fierce rattle and the wand flew out from a door off to the side of one corridor, settling into his hand with a slap just as the first barrier sprang up in front of him. It was a flexible net of crawling light, meant to bounce the prisoners from the Janus Thickey ward back into the ward without harming them. Harry dropped to one knee and rolled under the net before it could reach all the way to the floor, not something that most of the insane people he'd been imprisoned with would probably think of. He was up on the other side and continuing his run probably before most of the Healers realized that their trap had failed.

He heard a few shouts, and then the corridor went strangely quiet. Harry knew what that meant. He'd once been in St. Mungo's when someone else-a criminal he was guarding as he went through medical treatment, in fact-had tried to escape, and the hospital administrators had told him to stand down and let their defenses handle it. They'd worked well, too.

The end of the corridor glowed. Shimmering, transparent dragons that could have been Patronuses shot towards him, although they were made of violet light rather than silver. One of them bowed its head and belched fire at him. Harry knew that it would itch if it made contact, so much so that he would become preoccupied with scratching instead of escaping.

That didn't matter. He made it not matter. He ducked his head again and murmured a short spell that he had learned when he was on the Gina Hendricks case; the creature he'd chased there, the one who killed Lionel, had once taken the form of a dragon. "_Aconitum draconis._"

The shield that sprang into being around him was a dull, tarnished silver, flickering up with sluggish light to touch the dragon's breath. The fire vanished, and a moment later, when the claws of the flying dragons brushed through the aura, they shrieked in tinny voices. The aura extended upwards in a sudden surge, and they vanished into tiny, rippling motes of light.

Someone swore and ducked out of sight, along with the rest of the crowd who'd been watching to see him caught and punished. Harry smiled grimly and leaped a stool that one of them had left in the center of the corridor, pounding down a flight of stairs and towards the door. The Dragonsbane Charm had been developed originally to try and drive back males in the rut and females protecting their eggs so fiercely that they couldn't be healed by Dragon-Keepers, but it had all sorts of uses for the person who wanted to apply it creatively.

He was nearly there when another defense came together in front of him. This one looked like a mirage of a pool in the desert, swimming with the same pale blue and green and gold. Harry didn't recognize the spell immediately and therefore didn't know what it would do, but he knew he was dead-or Malfoy was-if he slowed down. He cast a quick charm around his head that would protect his face and let him keep on breathing, and bulled through.

The mirage immediately closed down around him, and Harry realized that he was in the middle of a dense, bright fog. He could see nothing, and when he turned, it looked as if the fog extended for miles behind him, too. They could watch him wander in circles until they captured him.

_Not on my partner's life._

He crossed his arms in front of him and snapped, "_Lux aeterna!_"

The light that sprang out from his wand was as hot and brilliant as the desert sun that would have helped cause this illusion, if it was real. Crossing his arms meant it was held at enough of a distance from him that he wasn't immediately burned or blinded. Eyes half-shut, Harry held it up and waved it around.

The fog of the illusion spell hissed and cleared, burned away. Harry sped on, and the entrance was in front of him, and he leaped through it and was gone.

He had half-hoped that he might catch up with Malfoy before he Apparated, but he was glad now he hadn't. This way, the bastard couldn't tie him up and send him back into hospital. This way, Harry stood a chance of making a real difference.

He ducked into an alley, took ten seconds to remove the protective charm on his face and cast a Disillusionment Charm instead, and then Apparated to the nearest Ministry entrance.

* * *

"This is the situation as it stands."

Warren was a better organizer and a more efficient Auror than Draco would have been inclined to expect, given the red hair. She had already pulled together a chart that showed the sequence of steps Larkin had taken to break out of his cell, and the people he had killed on the way. Beneath that were projections about where he was expected to run, plans for clearing people out of those places, and a series of questions that needed answers about how they could confront him.

According to the chart, Larkin had waited until the height of noon, when the human guards at a distance from his cell were changing and the Dementors were weak from the sunlight. Then he had sent a vision to a shaken woman who had reported only that she had seen her death, a wall falling on her and potentially crushing her to death-the death she was most frightened of-if she didn't go at once to his cell and unlock it. Larkin had walked through the Dementors without seeming to notice them. Perhaps he wouldn't, was Warren's speculation, if he used magic based on fear; it would make him akin to the Dementors in some strange way, and probably leave him less vulnerable if the creatures were searching him for happy memories.

As he went, he had used Dark spells that turned the hands of the Aurors trying to pursue him into poisonous spiders, or turned their whole bodies into glass statues that Larkin then tipped over and shattered, or suffocated them with clear membranes that wrapped around their faces. For no reason. Because.

_Yes, he is a twisted, _Draco thought. Only someone twisted, driven mad by the magic he used, would be able to kill that casually.

Draco flexed one hand as he listened to Warren speak. The Dark Mark on his left arm stretched with the skin, made it rough and made it hard, and would be visible to anyone the instant he pulled his sleeve back. There was a reason that he wore formal robes all the time, and let others think it was because he was simply a Malfoy with the proper respect for tradition.

One could use Dark magic and still escape with sanity and morals intact. But one had to respect that power. The spells would twist on the practitioner easily, speaking to his deepest desires, calling more into the world than he meant to be there. And banishing the results of a Dark spell wasn't as simple as speaking the right countercurse.

Draco had heard people like him, people who knew the Dark Arts but hadn't fallen to their seductions, called tarnished, shadowed, darkened, almost anything but the proper term: cautious.

He was different from Larkin. He would face him and kill him, though, because he was the only one in the Socrates Corps who understood that mindset from the inside.

_What about Potter? _

Draco felt his mouth curl up. Potter was still safely in hospital where he belonged, and by the time he came out, Draco would have his first Socrates killing under his belt and the greater respect of the Corps.

"This is the way we will move," Warren said, and then cast a spell that left a sparking halo of blue-green energy in the air. Draco blinked. It sent a rippling sensation through him at the same time, like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. To look at her, he wouldn't have thought Warren capable of that kind of spellwork. _Impressive. _"We mark each other with this spell. It's a variant on a common Calming Charm used for Healing. Larkin won't be able to imitate it."

Draco narrowed his eyes for a moment, wondering why-the spell was delicate, but not beyond someone of Larkin's power-and then felt himself flush. _Because twisted can't use Healing magic. That's why._ Perhaps he didn't know everything there was to know about the inner workings of Socrates Corps and hunting the twisted after all.

Warren, oblivious to his discomfort, continued. "We take no chances. We will destroy Larkin. He's already killed Latham and landed Potter in hospital." She darted no suspicious sidelong glance at Draco, which also impressed him. Then again, there were only the three of them left out of Socrates's full strength of five, her and Draco and her partner Jenkins. "No chance of capturing him this time. Kill." She looked at Draco, and now there was a tinge of pallor to her face.

Draco lifted his head. "I _will _aim at him, and not you," he said. Here it was, the distrust he had expected despite four years of steady work in Lucretius Corps and an impeccable record during his three years of training. "I know how important it is that we kill him before he can harm someone else."

"That's not what she means," Jenkins broke in, leaning forwards. "What she means is that you seemed so relieved when you thought we could capture him. We don't know how often you've killed before. Will you be ruthless enough?"

_Oh_. Draco let out a small, soundless breath. He thought, as he did so often, of Dumbledore and that night on the Tower.

"I killed in the Sussex Necromancer case," he said. "Yes, I can."

Warren inclined her head, and went on, without a further question. Draco stared at both of them, and Jenkins winked.

Warmth squirmed to life in his belly. _Perhaps this will not be the sentence I assumed it was. _

* * *

Harry leaned back against the wall outside the Socrates office and retracted the Extendable Ear that he'd sent crawling along the floor until he could hear the plans Malfoy and the rest were making. He watched his hands as they folded up the Ear and tucked it back into place among his possessions, expecting them to shake, but they didn't.

_I can work with that. _

He would stay out of the way as much as possible, though if he saw the chance to trip Larkin up or herd him towards the rest, he would take it. And he would wait for the moment when he had to...when Larkin cast the curse, and he would prevent someone else from dying the way Lionel had died.

He'd seen the clouds swirling into place on his way into the Ministry under his thickest Disillusionment Charm, not enough to occlude the sun completely but enough to change its light to a thin greyness. And the rain had begun to fall, gentle and warm enough to create a faint moisture on his cloak hood.

Today was the day of the vision.

_It won't be long now, Lionel. And then I can finally apologize to you for not doing what I should have done in the first place, and asking for another partner when I realized that you didn't feel the same._

* * *

They appeared in a small alley off Diagon, close to where Larkin had been sighted, mopping rain from their faces. Warren began to cast the refreshing charm that would surround them with blue-green light. Draco watched the street and tried not to think about the rain.

_It's coincidence, what Potter told me. That's all._

Warren finished casting the charm and stepped back, eyeing both Jenkins and Draco as if she wanted to make sure they were paying attention. Draco knew that her eyes lingered longer on him, and he made sure that he stared back with the same ferocity until she gave an acknowledging blink and turned away from him, facing back into the rain.

"There are ways that we can draw him to us," she said quietly. "I've decided that this is the best way." She crouched down and took what looked like a handful of crushed rose petals from her pocket, casting them in a circle on the stone in front of them.

Draco backed a step away before he could stop himself. Warren glanced up at him. "Is there a problem, Auror Malfoy?"

Draco clipped off the shake of his head. "No, Auror." His left arm hurt and jerked under his cloak, but he hid that by folding his arms and glancing down the alley as though to make sure that he could guard them from a crazed attack by Larkin. His neck still ached with the shock, though.

_How many people know that the Aurors in Socrates Corps are using a summoning spell that began life as a Dark ritual? _

Warren finished scattering the rose petals and closed her eyes. For a moment, her fingers traveled back and forth on the stone in front of her, inside the circle, and then she intoned three deep Latin words that made Draco's spine vibrate. "_Accio, frango, revelo._"

Draco grimaced. That first word had made almost everyone think that this was just some version of the Summoning Charm; he'd read it described that way in several books. The _real _grimoires, such as the ones in his parents' library, said that spells like this one used the innocent first word to hide their real purpose.

"Summon, break, reveal" weren't an innocent combination if one knew Latin and thought deeply enough about it.

Warren broke the circle with a tap of her fingers that crushed one rose petal, and something insubstantial and milky rose from the stone with a swirl and arrowed away, aiming in a southwest direction. Warren rose to her feet with a faint smile. "It won't be long until he's here," she said. "I've already warned the Ministry to tell shops to shut down and clear the Alley of any curious onlookers."

Which was more than Draco had known she was going to do. He ground his teeth and told himself silently that he _would _learn more about how the Socrates Corps operated and what the relative standing of other people inside it was. As soon as this case was done. He wasn't fool enough to dispute what Warren was doing when two people had died so far and more might.

"Now," Warren said, when a bright red glow came from what looked like less than a mile away. She and Jenkins moved out in perfectly balanced wholeness. Jenkins was wearing her scary smile.

Draco jogged along behind them, trying not to feel left-behind and useless. He didn't have a partner at the moment...

_Which doesn't mean you need one. Particularly when Potter wouldn't have survived the trap Larkin left behind in his cell without your spellwork._

He drew his wand and concentrated on the bobbing blue-green auras in front of him. He didn't want to get separated from Warren and Jenkins, identifying auras or not. They were the ones who had hunted and killed twisted before he had, and Draco intended to watch and learn.

Then the air filled with cloudy, billowing forms. Draco dived under the nearest one and came up to one knee, staring. They looked like ghosts with sharper edges than normal, like the ones that certain witnesses to Larkin's first escape claimed to have seen taking him out of the cell-

But the one Draco faced looked like Latham.

He understood after a moment, and wished he hadn't. _He can summon and control the ghosts of his victims. That's what these are. _

Latham faced Draco, barring his further entrance into the Alley. Draco edged to the side, and the ghost didn't move, just watched him. Draco took some confidence that he wouldn't actually attack, and leaped past him, aiming for the spot he had last seen Warren and Jenkins.

Latham _spread, _that was the only word, extending the space he filled, and Draco was filled and surrounded by the fog-

And the pain in his chest, the _pain, _the fear as he realized that they'd never known what Larkin's flaw was or how to counter it, the storm of faces of the people he was leaving behind, the pain, the end-

Draco came out of the vision, which could only be a vision of Latham's death, writhing on the ground and screaming in a thin, high-pitched way that embarrassed him. His fingers hurt with the way that he had clutched at his own chest, and he sat up, breathing hard enough to embarrass himself. He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to make his chest move.

He had felt a heart attack. But that had been Latham's death, and Draco was still alive, and if Larkin thought that would delay him for more than a few moments, he should think again. Draco reached out to splay his palms on the stone and begin to rock himself to his feet.

Latham's ghost swept over him again, and the same thing happened, the distance in his ears, the pain in his chest, the way that he could feel his heart give a great bound and then _stop_, the faces-

Draco came back to himself this time curled up around his heart and behind a Shield Charm that he must have cast instinctively, a reflex learned during his Auror training. He sat up and spat, weakly. He was shaking.

There was no reason Larkin couldn't keep giving him that vision, again and again, until he died of the shock and the pain. It had been no less intense the second time.

Draco lifted his wand and held it as a barrier between him and the ghost. He knew a spell that would work, but he would have to do it quickly. The ghost was already coming around for another sweep, and he doubted that he would get back on his feet after this one, at least not without help.

Warren and Jenkins were ahead of him. They wouldn't see him, wouldn't know, if he used a Dark spell to banish the ghosts, the way he should have at the beginning.

But before Draco could speak the spell, someone shouted it from behind him, the exact one he was thinking of using, the pronunciation perfect and a blast of power in it that made Draco's hair stand up on the nape of his neck. "_Abigo effigam!_"

The air around him turned the color of a stomcloud, and the sky seemed to crack at the same moment, as a jagged purple bolt like reverse lightning twisted up from the ground and embraced Latham's ghost. He struggled for a second, his features coming into clearer alignment as his eyes widened and his mouth opened-

The ghost whirled down to a silver pinpoint in the mouth of the lightning, and was gone. Draco crouched there, panting, as the stormcloud faded and the rainy, grey light came back again. He stared over his shoulder, and saw nothing but the shut doors of shops and the barrels and crates on the street from the ones offering special displays of their wares that he had already noted.

"Potter?" he whispered.

No response.

_And I don't have time to hang about and look for him, _Draco realized as he heard the shouts from ahead. If the ghosts were still attacking Warren and Jenkins, then at least he knew how to banish them now. He shoved himself to his feet and began to run.

* * *

_There are advantages to being good at Disillusionment Charms, _Harry thought, smiling to himself as he leaped over a barrel and shot after Malfoy. He was a good runner, and Harry, still wincing in pain sometimes as he hobbled on his chewed feet, was hard-pressed to keep up with him. But as long as he had Malfoy in sight when they reached the corner of the building from his vision, then he thought it would be all right. He would see the building soon. He would recognize it.

The vision was coming true.

There was a certain peace in giving yourself over to death, Harry decided as he splashed through a shallow puddle. He had felt that way a few times on the Gina Hendricks case, when the creature had cornered him and he had thought it would kill him, before Lionel came up and blasted it aside. When he had slaughtered it for the crime of killing Lionel, he hadn't felt the same way; there had been the blaze of righteousness inside him, the endless tunnel of light that he thought he might fall down, but not until he had avenged his partner.

_Not now. _The memory filled his chest with brewing anger and threw off his stride. Malfoy had dodged between the edges of two crates up ahead and was closing in on Warren and Jenkins. Harry followed him, wondering if they would also be part of the vision. That flying glimpse hadn't included them one way or another. They might be side-tracked, sent off somewhere on a mad chase by Larkin-

Malfoy roared the spell that banished the ghosts, and he did it better than Harry. Harry spent a moment admiring the way that his hair framed his face and blew back from it as he did that-

_No thinking like that. _

Then Harry snorted to himself. Exactly who would he _hurt _thinking like that? He was going to die in a few minutes, and no one would ever know his thoughts, unless there was an afterlife after all. Then he could laugh about them with his parents and Lionel, and Malfoy would _still _never know. Harry couldn't imagine they would associate in the same places even in death.

This was a temporary aberration, their partnership, which fate had taken it on itself to resolve.

But it would last long enough for Harry to save Malfoy's life.

Then Malfoy whipped away from Warren and Jenkins and took off. Harry, straining his eyes, saw it too: the trailing edge of a cloak that whipped around the corner of a building.

Madam Malkin's.

Harry followed Malfoy with a laugh in his heart. Yes, this was the appropriate place for it to end for both of them, where it all began.

Malfoy rounded the corner. Harry cast a Feather-Gliding Charm and sprang onto a barrel and then down on the other side of Malfoy, his cloak spreading out like wings to enable him to get slightly ahead.

He could see Larkin, waiting, while at the mad angle he was taking, Malfoy couldn't. Harry nodded. There was light in him after all. Better to die doing something he loved than in some of the cold and lonely ways he'd pictured to himself after he lost Lionel.

Larkin opened his mouth to laugh. Malfoy rounded the corner. Larkin lifted and aimed his wand.

Harry dropped the charms that kept him invisible and leaped between.

He felt the pain eating him, saw Malfoy's mouth, open in shock, and Larkin's, open in laughter-

And then the pain really _was _the whole world. Harry closed his eyes, and thought of Lionel, and surrendered.


	7. Under Fire

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven-Under Fire_

Draco had enough time to figure out what was going on, although he didn't expect Potter's wild rush out of nowhere. Perhaps the vague way Potter had talked about the vision he'd had had prepared him better than he'd thought at the time.

He was borne down and rolled under Potter's weight. He heard Potter scream, choking, as the curse hit him. Draco cast the first spell that came to mind, the one that had been hovering there ever since he realized how hard Larkin would be to kill. "_Fin temporum!_"

It was a Dark spell, in much the same way that Time-Turners had been Dark. Altering time had such bad consequences that the Ministry classified all magic that could do that under Dark Arts automatically. But this particular incantation had a limited range, and Draco was sure that he _could _use it to limit the damage that the curse would cause to Potter; it was just a matter of making sure that he had enough power behind it and that he said the words correctly. _Fin tempore _would have caused all sorts of problems.

The light that whirled out from the end of his wand took the form of a spiral, so white-silver that Draco found it hard to look at. He knew it would seize Potter and seal him within a bubble of frozen time, during which nothing would change; his body and mind would experience a subjective moment, forever if necessary, or until Draco broke the spell or died. It would isolate Potter in the midst of his pain, but it would also prevent the damage Larkin's curse had done to him from getting any worse.

Draco rolled out from under Potter and came to a kneeling position. Larkin still stood where he had been, mouth open like a jackal's. Draco spat the Leg-Locker jinx at him and watched it bounce off a shimmering dark shield that sucked in all the heat in the weak sunlight.

"Come here," Larkin said. He was regarding Draco with wider eyes and still wider mouth, as if Draco's soul was something he could swallow. "You are more interesting than I thought, a practitioner of the Art yourself. You ought to know that you can't capture me. You kill or you die."

_Yes, you do. _Draco was a fool, he knew, to have tried so harmless a spell.

He rose to his feet and walked towards Larkin. The area seemed very quiet, deserted. He didn't know where Warren and Jenkins were, if they had fought free of the ghosts and might be circling around even now or if they were still occupied by Larkin's defenses. He could do nothing to help them right now, anymore than he could change things for Potter. His priority had to be killing Larkin.

"More interesting than I thought," Larkin said thoughtfully, and then twitched a finger. His wand was in his other hand, Draco thought, even as his Auror instincts reacted to the finger and threw him sideways, and that meant that he cast a curse into the path of Draco's fall.

It was nonverbal, but Draco knew enough Dark magic to recognize the effects: the swirling net of green and gold that came to life in front of him would flash over him and strip the flesh from his bones if he fell into it.

Draco twisted himself in mid-air and took a jarring blow on the hip from the cobblestones as he landed next to the net. Then he twisted and somersaulted away from the next curse, this one a more straightforward one that would simply cause pain. Larkin snorted and walked nearer.

"Does a Dark Lord refuse to duel the enemies who come to him?" Larkin's voice was thick, probably with anger. With Draco's luck, it wouldn't be simple madness, and he wouldn't be on the verge of collapsing of high blood pressure. "He does not! You are no true heir of mine."

_I don't know what he means, and I doubt it matters. _Draco's shield got in the way of the next curse, and then he was up on his feet and circling away so that he had a clear shot at Larkin. There was something he wanted to try, but the incantation was long and he doubted he would get all the way through it before Larkin jumped him again. He had a chance to distract him, though.

"You have no idea, do you?" Draco whispered, while the first words of the incantation began building in his head. _Ignis, flamma ignis..._ "You have no idea who you were trying to kill."

Larkin snorted. "If you mean me to think that you are more than an ordinary Auror and the heir of a pure-blood family who threw away what his family had earned, then you must try again." He feinted suddenly and ducked in as Draco brought his wand around defensively. This particular curse raked a line of blood down Draco's side, but it didn't disable him. He wondered for a moment if Larkin had intended that result, if he wanted to kill him slowly.

No. The Piranha Death spell argued otherwise. Larkin was twisted, which by definition meant mad, not in control of himself. He was choosing his spells randomly, now wanting to kill Draco, now wanting to torture him.

"I meant Potter," Draco said. "The only one who could fight and kill a Dark Lord in the last fifty years. Do you mean to say that you don't _know_ what happens to the power of a Dark Lord when he's defeated?"

Insecurity was suddenly brightening Larkin's eyes, coming from a depth that Draco knew he would never have recognized if not for Joanna Larkin's stories. _She told us that he studied fear and measured himself against the great Dark Lords of the past. That impulse is still there. _"Nothing," Larkin insisted. "It dissipates into the air like the power of any other wizard."

Draco actually paused long enough to give him a look of pity. _Ignis, flamma ignis, potens flammae..._ "No," he said. "There was a reason that Dumbledore became so renowned after he defeated Grindelwald, and there's still a reason people mention Potter in hushed tones eleven years after the Dark Lord died."

Larkin backed a step away and looked over his shoulder at Potter, sucking his teeth uncertainly. Draco concealed a triumphant sneer and continued chanting the spell to himself. He would have to repeat it several times to be sure, he thought, until it was filling his limbs and blood with destructive force and he could unleash it in a ringing torrent that would obliterate Larkin. _Potens flammae, casses animae, flamma ignis..._

"He is not," Larkin said, and he sounded as if he was arguing with himself rather than responding to Draco's words.

"Not the heir of the Dark Lord?" Draco shrugged with one shoulder. "Not in any conventional sense, no. But Dumbledore took something from Grindelwald that day, or how could he have defeated him so easily? He wasn't especially powerful or important before then, although some people admired him. After that, he only gained in renown."

Larkin sneered, and the balance in his mind had probably tilted the other way. _Ignis, ignis, ignis, _Draco chanted to himself. "He can't have been _that _powerful or renowned. He ended his days as a Headmaster of a school, not doing anything more important."

Draco let his voice turn sly, in the very best way he had learned from his father. "What, and you've never thought of the power to be gained by shaping the brains of your followers young? Training them to love and fear you, to feel nostalgia for their schooldays that they can't ever shake off? There were so many mourners at Dumbledore's funeral, even in the middle of a war, that they didn't have enough seats for them all."

"That was the end of him," Larkin said, though the uncertainty still thrummed in his voice. "He was killed by one of his followers he hadn't trained well enough."

"But he wasn't a Dark Lord, either," Draco said. "He didn't choose to take his power in that direction. And the power fades year by year if it isn't used, until it does become nothing more than the ghost of a smoke trickle that you were talking about." This was so much bollocks, but it was also fertile, and it nourished Larkin's fantasies of delusion and kept him talking. Warren and Jenkins hadn't appeared. They weren't coming. Draco thought he could talk as long as he wanted. "Now, Potter still has that chance. But he won't if someone kills him without taking the power from him in the right way. And neither will anyone else."

Larkin's eyes shone like the eyes of a fish on the hook, fighting not to bite. Draco smiled at him, while words of flame and doom swirled and circled in his mind.

"What would happen if someone took the power in the right way?" Larkin whispered, finally falling in the direction that Draco had wanted him to.

_Thank you, Merlin. _Draco turned his head away, shaking it. "I don't even like to think about it," he whispered. "Because the world will change, and I know that I could be the one to make it do so...but I've never had the courage to kill." The chances that Larkin knew about the Sussex Necromancer case were small, since the file had been sealed. And it didn't take long to slip bitterness into his voice, not when Draco had been thinking and talking about Dumbledore. And right now, he needed Larkin to believe that Draco was useful to him, no threat.

Invisible force seized Draco around the throat in a collar, bending him to the ground and nearly making him lose control of the building spell. "I demand that you tell me!" Larkin shrieked in his face. "How do I take the power?"

Draco sneered at him. "I told you. You've already done something stupid. That spell is going to kill him the minute _my _spell is gone." He hadn't looked at the bites that the acidic curse had laced Potter's body with, but he knew they would go deep and probably bleed out unless Potter was in St. Mungo's.

"No. No!" Larkin whipped back around and stared at Potter, floating motionless in his motionless bubble. "There's still time," he whispered, as if there was someone around he had to convince, besides Draco and himself. "There has to be a way." He glanced at Draco. "If I spare your life, will you help me?"

Draco pretended to think about it, frowning. _Ignis, ignis, ignis. _"I thought that you despised the Dark Lord," he said at last. "That you thought he didn't get enough fear out of his followers, or something."

"That doesn't matter, not next to the _power_." Larkin said the words with a sliding, deepening tone, a sexual longing that made Draco shudder, although he thought he hid it successfully. "If you can teach me how to pull it out of Potter and make it my own, then I'll be stronger. I can make more people fear me." His eyes flashed. "And I'll teach you how to call the ghosts."

Some part of Draco, more than half-buried during his years in the Aurors, seriously considered it for a moment. He didn't know any way to pull the Dark Lord's power from Potter, of course, because no such transfer had happened. But there were ways of extracting ordinary magic from the dying. Larkin would be happy with that, most likely, since Potter was strong. And then Draco would have the chance to avenge himself on more than one person who had scorned him...

But Draco shook his head. No. He had chosen differently, and he would not make his parents say that he had gone back on his choices before more than a decade had passed.

Besides, Larkin was insane. Twisted. Any bargain he made with Draco wouldn't endure, even if he swore the most solemn oaths; he would forget about the consequences of breaking them, and do so anyway.

"If you can do that," Draco said, and tried to make it sound as though he was concentrating deeply on the details of Larkin's offer instead of the spell that was building in his head, "then you would be more powerful than anyone else. You would-you would _terrify _lots of people because they wouldn't know whether you might pull something out of your pocket that had been yours, or Potter's, or the Dark Lord's."

Larkin smiled at him. His eyes danced with fiery sparks, literally; they leaped out of his face and fell to the ground. Draco wondered, with the part of his mind that was always detached and thinking no matter what the situation, whether that was another sign of a twisted that he could put on the record.

If he got out of this situation, of course. There was always that to consider.

"You're clever," Larkin breathed. "I could use someone like that to watch my back." He turned and looked speculatively, again, at Potter. "How do we begin?"

"Well," Draco said, and laded his voice with doubt, while the spell continued singing in his head through one repetition and began another, "you'd have to reverse the curse on him so that he didn't immediately die when I brought him out of the time bubble. And then we'd have to find some other way to kill him."

"That's simple enough," Larkin said dismissively. "Those kinds of curses can just make a ghost die again." And he snapped his fingers in front of him, at the same moment as he reached out and ripped through Draco's magic preserving Potter's life as though it was a curtain he was moving aside.

Draco caught his breath harshly, but the blood hadn't begun to trickle from Potter's wounds before Larkin was sending a ghost to cover him. Draco didn't recognize this one, though by the long robes it might have been Whitley, dying at her party. The spell leaped off Potter in the same clear swirl of light as before and bit into the ghost instead, and with a wail she vanished.

Potter lay there, breathing slightly, his skin unmarked.

Larkin nodded to Draco. "Whenever you're ready."

Draco moved forwards in a stately fashion and bent over Potter, pretending that he was making a magic circle around Potter when he was in reality emptying random Potions ingredients from his pockets and making meaningless passes with his wand. The spell waited just behind his lips, and he had to figure out some way to be able to cast the whole thing without Larkin suspecting him.

And without Potter interfering, for that matter.

* * *

Harry knew he was still alive the moment the pain left his body. It was a jolting, flying moment, because in the middle of a breath he was dying of his wounds, and the next he wasn't.

He had learned not to ask about the other miracles he had been granted, though, until the immediate danger passed and left him with some chance of surviving them. He lay there, head sagging to the side, eyes shut, and he plotted.

He could feel Larkin bending over him for a moment, and then he straightened and said something. Then Malfoy was close, and by lifting his eyelids the tiniest bit, Harry could see that he was tracing his wand back and forth in large circles over Harry's body, the kind a swaying pendulum might make.

There was another flying moment when Harry was convinced Malfoy was a traitor, that he had been working with Larkin all along, and that was the reason Larkin's kill count was so high-

And then Harry forced the stupid suspicion out along with his breath. No. Larkin would have been successful the first time he tried to kill Harry if that was true. No point in saving Harry for later.

So. Malfoy must be doing something else, something that would fool Larkin and convince him Malfoy was on his side, or hold him at bay until Malfoy could summon help or a spell. Harry could help by lying still and pretending to be senseless. He did, and he didn't even reach for his wand, which sprawled beside him, strong though the temptation was.

He would wait for a signal.

"You're certain this is going to work?" Larkin asked. His voice had a hard edge now. "That you really _can _drain the power from another wizard and add it to your own? I've never heard of it."

To suppress his grin was harder than to suppress any sign of alertness, but Harry managed anyway. _So that's the lie Malfoy used to lure him closer. Clever._

"That's because the books mostly don't mention that you need to do it in the moment of death," Malfoy said, his voice cool and polished and without a trace of the breathlessness that Harry knew he must be feeling, other than a slight edge to the words that could be attributed to having his concentration broken. "They just assume that it's something that happens or doesn't happen, and the wizards who _do _have the power added to their own sometimes think they're experiencing an adrenaline rush instead of magic."

"Oh." Harry heard the sound of Larkin shifting from foot to foot. "If it's not in books, then how did you learn it?"

"My father was the Dark Lord's right-hand man for a long time," Malfoy said, his voice even more cool, even more distant. Harry felt the hairs on his arms stand up, and reckoned Malfoy was drawing strongly on his magic, preparing a spell-blast that ought to weaken Larkin. Well, at least hopefully it would. "Did you think that all of the knowledge that enabled him to rise that far was contained in books?"

"That isn't far compared to being a Dark Lord himself," Larkin objected. "If he knew this technique, he could have become one."

"Only if the enemies he harvested the power from were Dark Lord-level themselves," Malfoy said, his voice faint. "And they weren't."

Harry wished he dared turn his head and estimate how close Larkin was, but he didn't, even though he thought at the moment that he had never wanted anything more. He began to draw in his magic, though, because if Malfoy didn't have a plan, he would need to. And it was as well to be prepared against any of the ghosts who might appear.

"Why did Potter never use the power he has, if he's on the level of a Dark Lord?" From the sound of it, Larkin was drifting closer and still closer. "You would have thought he would, if only to capture the criminals that he pretends are such a great concern." A sneer in the last of those words, but Harry couldn't tell who it was directed against, the Aurors who thought they were doing good or the petty criminals around him who thought they were so great.

And it might not matter, truly. Harry began gathering his muscles beneath him, so slowly that he doubted Larkin would see it if he didn't know what he was looking for. He would spring and fling a blast of the power Larkin so wanted right into his face. That might serve to slow him down.

"He wanted to do other things." Malfoy's voice still had that odd faintness. It could come, Harry thought, from weariness or from wariness around Larkin or temptation to take Harry's power for himself, if there was any way to do such a thing...or, sudden thought, from the concentration necessary to gather up a huge spell, of the kind that would do actual damage to Larkin. "Arrest people without the other Aurors fearing him. Get some recognition that didn't depend on reminding people that he'd killed the Dark Lord."

_It's scary how well he knows me, if he can use that much truth in a lie meant to fool Larkin. _Harry wondered if he should shift and groan, attract Larkin's attention so that Malfoy could move.

But Larkin was mad, that was the problem. They didn't know if he would strike out at Harry, send his ghosts in, run away, or even assume that Malfoy had betrayed him and lash out at him in turn, just because.

"I will not be so foolish," Larkin said, and he chuckled. The sound raised all the hair on Harry's nape and arms not currently standing up. "When I have the power, I will hold onto it."

Malfoy didn't answer, but his breathing became slightly faster. Harry had heard that before from Ron when he was on the edge of a major spell.

_And from Lionel._

In the end, Harry chose to trust that Malfoy knew what he was doing, and to lie still and keep his eyes closed. He could hear Larkin breathing as he shuffled closer, soft exhalations like muttered prayers.

And then Malfoy roared aloud, and Harry felt the wash of heat across his head, almost setting his hair on fire, as the flames leaped out of Larkin's body, cooking his bone marrow first, and then boiling his blood, and then roasting his skin.

Larkin was screaming, but whether the screams were curses or summons to his ghosts, Harry didn't know, and didn't have to care, because they didn't work. He rolled forwards and hit Malfoy in the knees, bearing him to the ground and shielding him with his own body as the flames raged on. He knew the curse Malfoy had used, called the Flame Net, and he knew that the touch of a single spark on someone other than the intended victim could still light that person on fire and roast him. Malfoy grunted and said something in an acidic voice that Harry didn't bother listening to, either. He knew that Malfoy would be content later to be alive.

Or, at least, he had bloody well better be.

They lay there until the sound of the flames died, and then Harry lifted his head and opened his eyes. There was nothing left where Larkin had stood but a fine, light mound of ash, already stirring in the wind, as though the world wanted to scrub him away and forget that he had ever existed. Harry swallowed and stood up, stretching his muscles as he glanced around. Warren and Jenkins were running towards them, their faces set in stiff masks. Not quite believing masks, Harry thought. Perhaps they believed that Harry and not Malfoy should have destroyed Larkin.

He looked down at Malfoy, who still leaned against the wall where Harry had placed him, in a half-sitting position. "Thank you," Harry said, as politely as he could. "You saved my life."

Malfoy eyed him, reaching up to touch a lump on the back of his head as though he thought Harry had made that appear on purpose. "You're welcome," he said. He paused, checked on the progress of the other Aurors, and then added, "We have things to talk about."

Harry knew that, but Warren and Jenkins were coming up fast, and he could use them as a convenient excuse. He nodded and said, "I know. Later?"

Malfoy flashed his teeth, and said, "Later," in a way that made the word a promise and threat all at once. Then he stood, braced himself against the wall, and answered Warren's first shouted question in a lazy drawl.

Harry closed his eyes and sighed out. _I never really thought about what would happen if I survived that vision, because I didn't expect to._

_ Now I have to think about it._

_ Shit._


	8. A Flair for Excuses

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of this particular fic, but there are others in the series coming up.

_Chapter Eight—A Flair for Excuses_

Warren and Jenkins, as it turned out, had been delayed by two of the ghosts that refused to vanish until the moment Larkin died. Then they came as fast as they could, to find a hero—

And someone who no one seemed to know what to do with.

Harry leaned back against the chair that they'd given him in the Socrates office and closed his eyes. He could use a few minutes alone, since everyone else was busy with paperwork and witness statements about the Larkin case. He'd made the excellent point that, since he kept his eyes closed or was unconscious for ninety percent of Malfoy's confrontation with Larkin, he wasn't actually a witness.

Besides, he knew that he would have a _special _interrogation team, composed of not just the Head Auror but Healers from St. Mungo's and a good portion of his superiors in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He wasn't looking forward to it.

He had to figure out what he was going to tell them.

_That Tella was right, and I do have a death wish? That would go down well with everyone, and they'd probably reconsider keeping me on as an Auror as well as putting me in Socrates Corps._

_ That I thought Malfoy couldn't handle himself? No. That would be an explanation for why I escaped hospital and came to help, but not for why I leaped in front of Larkin's curse instead of trying to take Larkin on myself._

_ That I didn't trust Malfoy and thought he might be working with Larkin? They'd want to know why I didn't report those suspicions earlier._

In the end, Harry sighed and decided that the explanation for why he'd been so determined not to let Malfoy share Lionel's fate was probably the simplest, after all. He would tell them that he still had nightmares and residual guilt from Lionel's death, which was the truth, although he would exaggerate the scope of the nightmares and downplay the scale of the guilt. Then they would return him to St. Mungo's for observation and have him talk to some people. But it would seem to be a resolvable problem, a problem they could fix, and they would let him stay in the Aurors. That was important.

"Potter."

Harry turned and blinked, thinking for a moment that Malfoy had come to summon him to his audience with the Head Auror and the others. His mouth was full of a light-hearted comment all ready to go, something about how Malfoy was lucky, because that was the shortest interrogation he had heard of since being in the Aurors.

But Malfoy came in by himself, not with Warren and Jenkins as he would have if they were all through being questioned, and as Harry watched, he shut the office door behind himself and locked it with a little twist of his wand. Then he paced towards Harry, his steps as grave and solemn as the steps of a judge. He did pause briefly by Latham's desk, as though, like Harry, he remembered the day they had first met up here and the man had done a poor job of spying on them through a flimsy shield of paperwork.

Harry winced at the thought. _I didn't really know Latham, and Larkin still reached out and plucked him from life before I had a chance to do so._

"They're saying that it's because you're a hero," Malfoy said when he reached Harry. He stood there, looking down at him, and Harry looked back and up with no idea of how to respond. Did Malfoy believe that, holding Harry in contempt for thinking that he couldn't save his own life? Harry had no idea. "But I know it's not. You tried to tell me something about the vision in hospital, and I ignored you. You knew what was going to happen, and you threw yourself in the path of that curse. Why?"

Harry gave a long, rattling sigh that he knew came from the bottom of his lungs. Well, he had known Malfoy would find out about Lionel eventually. At least there was an official cover story there.

"I had a partner before I was assigned here," he said. "Lionel Vane, the only one I've worked with since Ron who really understood me and didn't think that my fame was earning me special favors or that I needed to be protected and coddled because of it. How much do you know about the Gina Hendricks case?"

"That the criminal wasn't human," Malfoy said promptly, drawing up another chair but not sitting in it. He leaned against his desk instead, his gaze deep and searching as he studied Harry. "That you were the one who hunted and killed it."

"Lionel died on that case," Harry said. "I don't think I could have killed the creature without the—the rage that that gave me. And I determined that no one would ever die like that again, no one partnered to me. The spell I saw in the vision, the one that would have destroyed me, was the same one the creature used on Lionel. No cure. Except the time-stopping you found. Thank you," he added.

Malfoy's eyes narrowed. "You think that Larkin knew and took that information from your brain?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't think we know what Larkin was capable of, exactly, and now we'll never know. It could have been coincidence. But I couldn't let you die like that. Nor any other way. I'm still in mourning for Lionel. I thought it wasn't affecting me badly, but now I see it was. So. I'll get some therapy for it, and then hopefully be a better partner to you."

Malfoy spent a little time staring at him. Harry stared wearily back. It was the truth, all except the part where he'd been in love with Lionel. That part belonged to him, and the dead.

Then Malfoy said quietly, "Bollocks."

Harry snorted, glad that his anger would still rise when he called for it. His guilt had sometimes eaten it before. But he didn't think that Malfoy had anything to complain about here, not when Harry had saved his life and trusted him and apologized. "What? You think I have some _reason _to lie to you?"

Malfoy shook his head. Harry would have thought he'd sit down by now, but apparently he didn't want to surrender the psychological advantage of standing up. "I think that there's a reason you didn't tell me about this directly when I asked you about the vision in hospital," he said. "You could have explained you saw yourself saving my life. I might not have believed you, but I would have been more cautious. Why didn't you?"

Harry opened his mouth, and then shut it. The silence stretched between them, and grew both longer and deeper.

Trust bloody Malfoy to have picked the one question he didn't really have an answer for.

* * *

Draco felt his satisfaction surge like blood when Potter leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He could have raged, but that would have put Potter's back up and involved them in a shouting contest. Draco didn't enjoy those, not when there were so many more productive things he could do instead—like shaming Potter into realizing his own mistake.

And he knew there was more here than Potter had told him, although that choice of question had been a lucky guess. He _knew _that Potter's destructive behavior in escaping from hospital, destructive of Healers' tempers and hospital wards as well as his own body, had a deeper explanation. He would learn what it was, and he would help Potter recover from it or eliminate it.

If he could not, then he would seek promotion into another Corps in the Auror Department. He refused to have a suicidal partner, one whose lack of success would reflect on Draco's abilities in one of two negative ways: either he would die, or he would be the one who survived but looked like a coward compared to the Boy-Who-Lived.

_Or I could find myself on trial for murder as the one who let the Great Harry Potter perish._

Draco would not have that happen. Perhaps others had been blinded by Potter's fame to how broken he was, but Draco would not be. He fastened his eyes on Potter and waited.

"I," Potter said at last, and bowed his head. "Because I can't let another partner die. And I was afraid that you would take more risks if I told you what I saw. Either because you saw it as your duty to prove me wrong or because you would want to prevent the vision from coming true and do something that carried you into danger that I couldn't see," he added, obviating Draco's need for a question about what kind of an idiot he thought Draco was. "I see it as my duty to keep you safe."

"I have the same training as you," Draco said, after Potter had sat there staring at his hands and Draco had breathed quietly through his anger for a few minutes. "I haven't done this for as long as you, since I entered the training program when you left it, but I do. Your conclusion that I would go out of my way to doubt you is insulting."

Potter gave him a flat look. "Is it? You thought I was lying in hospital—"

"You were."

"About _having _the vision, not what it contained." Potter leaned forwards insistently. "Ron was used to the visions. Lionel accepted them. Hale, the partner I had between Ron and Lionel, thought I was mad and refused to work with me. I didn't want that to happen with you. And you went on thinking that I was lying about having them even when you saw two of them come true, and you can go back and look in my files and find out how many cases I've solved because of them. Why the _fuck _should I tell the truth to someone who would always think I was lying, about the visions in general and not just that specific time?"

"Larkin could have fooled you," Draco said. "And just because you had those visions from him doesn't mean that you have them in general."

He knew the excuse was weak, and Potter's gaze cut straight through him and his words. He reached out to his desk, behind him, and scooped up a thick stack of reports. He slapped them down in front of Draco, and Draco started at the noise.

"Read through those," Potter said. "My visions are mentioned in all of them. They didn't always lead us to the murderer or prevent victims from dying, but they were there. And they did help."

Draco grimaced. It seemed he had to accept that the visions Potter had seen weren't simply a trick of Larkin's.

But the truth still remained.

"Can I trust you to tell the truth about your visions next time, and not conceal important things from me in the name of protecting me?" he demanded. "Because if I can't, then it means little that I might trust you about having them."

Potter bared his teeth. "It's a complex, from my failure to save Lionel," he said. "I can't help it."

"You can and you will, if you work with me," Draco said, leaning forwards until he was in Potter's space. "Whatever it takes. And I think it's insulting to Auror Vane's memory that you think of him solely as the victim that you failed to save. He was an adult. He chose this job. He had the same training. He passed the tests to get in and the tests to become a full Auror. Are you going to say that he shouldn't have been out there?"

* * *

_You don't understand, _Harry wanted to cry out, instead of sitting there, frozen by the pressure of Malfoy's words. _I could have saved him if I had been a bit stronger, a bit faster, a bit—_

_He might have trusted me more if he had never known how he felt about him. I was the one to blame for falling in love with him._

But Harry swallowed that part back, because he wasn't going to share it. And without it, his actions wouldn't make sense to someone else. Hell, they might not make sense to someone else _with _it. Harry didn't know, because he had never tried to explain it to someone else before. He sighed and nodded.

"No," he said. "I know he should have. I simply start thinking sometimes that I could have spared him if I'd been a little more careful."

Malfoy eyed him, as though he wanted to accept Harry's words but didn't think he could. Then he tapped one finger hard on his desk, frowning at Harry. "You won't be thinking that the next time we work together in the field, I hope."

"No," Harry said. Malfoy had saved his life. Harry had to give him credit for that. "And I am going to talk to someone about this."

Malfoy nodded, although the frown still lingered in the corners of his eyes and mouth. "If it matters, Potter, I lost a partner on the case that resulted in my promotion to the Socrates Corps. I'd worked with Kellen for four years, and the loss was a shock and a blow. But I'm not trying to overprotect you, am I?"

Harry opened his mouth to say that he couldn't imagine Malfoy overprotecting anyone—

And then he remembered what Malfoy had done in pursuit of safety for his parents during their sixth year at Hogwarts, and closed his mouth.

"I'll try, Malfoy," he said. "As long as you realize that it's not going to change in a day. And I'll still make mistakes."

"I wouldn't know what to do without mistakes from you," Malfoy said.

Harry smiled, then blinked as he realized what he was doing. Malfoy, too, opened his mouth and then shut it with a little blink, almost squinting down his own nose as though he was trying to understand why this amused him.

"Fine," Harry said, standing up and moving around his desk to make sure that there weren't any files there he would need to take with him to his interrogation. "So we've established that we work together better than expected, and that perhaps the Department knew what they were doing when they decided to partner us. Is there anything else that we need to work out?"

Malfoy was back to the frown-and-stare part. Harry stared back, emotionally exhausted. That was the deepest he'd talked with anyone since Lionel's death. Hermione and Ron had given him silent support, knowing there were things between him and Lionel that he would have found it impossible to share with anyone. The Healers hadn't been an option, and the Head Auror had given him the assignment to Socrates Corps as soon as he could walk again after the Gina Hendricks case.

"Other people have endured losses than you," Malfoy said.

"I know that," Harry said. "You just told me about one of them."

Malfoy shifted his weight. Harry thought he was reaching for words and not finding them, which had to be a novel experience for him. "I mean," Malfoy said, "that excessive sympathy for yourself is something that'll make you difficult to work with."

Harry rolled his eyes. "And I just acknowledged that that was the problem, and that I'm going to talk to someone about it. I don't know what else you want me to do. I can't go back in time and save Lionel's life."_ Though I would. I would in a moment._

"I want you to," Malfoy said, and paused and shook his head doubtfully. "To stop protecting me as if I'm made of glass."

"And I said that I would try that, too," Harry repeated patiently. "With some mistakes along the way. Shit, Malfoy, what _do _you want me from me? You have the right to ask for a lot, since I owe you a life-debt, but if we get into that, then we'll have to go back to the memories of the war and the debts we owe each other from _then_, and we'll never make good partners if we have to keep score like that."

* * *

Draco tilted his head. "I kept score like that with my partner Auror Moonborn all the time," he answered, mildly confused. He knew that he should have expected a few different reactions from Potter, but this seemed excessive.

Potter shook his head with a frown. "This isn't the same thing. If you're not Lionel, then I'm not Kellen. I don't want to keep count. I want to say that I owe you my life, and that in return, I have to acknowledge that you're a competent Auror, because you _are_. That doesn't mean we'll do things exactly the same."

Draco nodded. That sounded reasonable, on the surface, as did many of the things that Potter had just said to him.

And yet…

He thought there was something he was missing, something underneath that he should know about and didn't. But he didn't know what it could be. Potter had admitted that grief for his partner made him act irrationally, that Draco had saved his life, that a debt was there, and that he needed to take care of his problems. Those were all the admissions Draco had come seeking when he first entered the office and locked the door behind him. What else did he want from Potter?

_Something more. _

But that had been the case since first year when the shock of Potter's refusal had struck Draco's ego like a rock striking glass. And even if Potter had apologized the next day and become his best friend for life, Draco knew the bruise would still have been there. He was like that, largely unable to forget.

"Fine," he said. "Go away and let the Head Auror interview you, Potter. He sent me in here to do it first because he was putting it off, I think."

"Yes, he usually tries that," Potter muttered, looking both bored and irritated. Draco opened his mouth to ask how _many _times he had been scolded by the Head Auror and how easily he sat afterwards, but Potter walked out without looking at him again.

Draco settled back in the chair behind his desk. It would take several days of paperwork and probably another trip back to St. Mungo's for Potter, but this case was finished, and he thought he would enjoy the peace and quiet.

The stack of files that Potter had left for him to read caught his eye. Draco snorted and looked away, but his head kept turning back, and finally he gave in to his curiosity and picked the first one up. He flipped past reports, memos, the description of the arrest, and landed on a list of injuries, combined with photographs of them.

The first photograph showed a slender, dark-haired Auror, who matched what Draco remembered of Lionel Vane; he had never known the man well. He was leaning forwards and smiling into the camera, although a long, bloody gash ran down his left arm. On his shoulder leaned Potter, his own left arm in a sling, his body canted to the side in a way that suggested that something had happened to his leg, too. There was a strange mark on his face, one that looked like someone had slapped him with a hand that was on fire.

_He did lie. _Draco closed the file again and stared at the door, disturbed. _He was getting injured like that long before the case where Vane died, and he still doesn't care as much about his own life. _

Frowning, he slid the files back onto Potter's desk and turned to his own report. No point in taking up more burdens than he was prepared to, right now.

* * *

"You realize what this means, Potter?"

Harry nodded, his mouth set. "Yes, sir."

It wasn't the Head Auror they'd had in to talk to him after all, but Julian Okases, the second-in-command of the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He was probably only ten years older than Harry, but he ran a weary hand over his face now and shook his head, yawning like someone who had been up all night.

"We attempted to convince them to take you back," he said. "It didn't work. We offered to have you pay for the damages you caused in your escape, and even that wasn't possible. Their answer remains the same. You can't be treated at St. Mungo's, now or in the future."

"The prohibition doesn't extend to my friends or my partner, I would assume?" Harry asked quietly. He had no family to be affected.

"Of course not." Okases stared at him. He had grey eyes, though Harry didn't think they were as bright or as clear as Malfoy's. "Personally, I don't think St. Mungo's would have done this if you hadn't broken free of the Janus Thickey ward and disabled so many of their protections on top of the other disasters."

Harry knew what disasters he meant. Leaving hospital against Healers' advice, refusing to take certain potions that would have rendered him sleepy or inactive when he most needed to be alert, threatening a mediwizard at wandpoint when he awoke after a nightmare… There were a lot of things that had made more than just Healer Tella disgusted with him.

"I understand, sir," he said, for perhaps the fourth time in the conversation.

"I wish you could tell me what in the world we should do for you, Potter." There was that exhaustion again. "We've moved you to a new Corps, given you a new partner, in recognition of your skills…and the same problems seem to be happening all over again."

"I'm sorry, sir," Harry told his hands. He had told them the truth, over and over again: that the people around him and the work were more important to him than his personal safety, and that he had a tendency to be targeted by people who thought they had something to gain from killing him. That made for a bad combination, especially when he got wounded and couldn't slow down and take care of himself because someone else would get wounded if he did.

It wasn't that he really wanted to die—although sometimes, he had to admit, he wouldn't mind it, especially after Lionel. But if it happened in the pursuit of his work, it was about the best way it could happen.

"You'll have to make arrangements with the Ministry Healers to treat you after certain cases and before," Okases told him. "Make sure that you contact someone so you can talk about Auror Vane's death. This is clear?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you for the second chance, sir."

Okases sighed and waved him away. Harry stepped out into the corridor and started to shut the door behind him.

"Potter."

Okases's tone had suddenly grown sharp. Harry turned around, wondering what he had done now.

He started when he saw the way that Okases had stood and leaned forwards from the desk. His eyes had changed color from grey to blue, and there was hatred there that Harry knew instinctively didn't belong to the man being used to stare it at him.

"This isn't over," said the same sharp, hissing voice. "This was only the beginning."

Harry stared. Okases sat back down behind the desk and looked up at him, and the blueness was gone. He looked only weary, and surprised that Harry was still present. Harry never spent more time in the offices of his superiors than he absolutely had to.

"Well?"

Harry swallowed. He knew without asking that Okases wouldn't remember what had happened to him, and so it seemed silly to ask. "Going, sir," he muttered, and shut the door behind him.

Out in the corridor, he took stock. He had a new partner who didn't trust him, a ban for life from St. Mungo's, and apparently some kind of new opponent who could take over people and talk through them from a distance, which didn't sound like any spell Harry had ever heard of—but sounded very much like a flaw.

_Well, shit. _

**The End.**

This isn't a permanent end. There will be another one-shot next week that is a sequel to this fic (just as this fic is a sequel to "Invisible Sparks"), and others beyond that.


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